
Class J3 G % 1 



finpyrighf F J> fl k? y 

CGEXRIGHI DEPOSIT. 



- 



HELPING FRANCE 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



A Village in Picardy 

With 20 illustrations from Poulbot's 
DES GOSSES ET DES BONHOMMES 

Colored Wrapper $1.50 net 

Treasure Flower 

With 12 full page illustrations, 4 in 
colors 

$1.50 net 

The Village Shield 

(in collaboration with GEORGIA 

WILLIS READ) 
With 12 full page illustrations, 4 in 
colors 

Colored Wrapper $1.50 net 



E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 




/ M. UPJOHN 



REFUGEE FROM HAZEBROUCK 
AGED 92 



HELPING FRANCE 

The Red Cross in 
the Devastated Area 



BY 

RUTH GAINES 
if 

Aothob op "A Village in Picabdt," etc. 




NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 Fifth Avenue 
Pr\r>\/ O 



■v$k 



e,°<1 



COPTBIGHT, 1919, BT 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 



All Rights Reserved 



Printed in the United States of America 



JUL 18 1919 ©CI.A.529253 S 



PREFACE 



A FRENCH newspaper correspondent 
was conducted one day through the 
Paris offices of the American Red Cross. He 
was vastly and courteously impressed both by 
what he saw and by his guide. "But," he 
writes, "I cannot name to you the person who 
showed me about because he was an officer, 
and I suppose that in America as in France 
the uniform fosters and expresses the wish for 
a loss of identity." It was charmingly put, 
delicately imagined. Best of all, it is true. 

Our American Red Cross in France, ac- 
cused by some of aggressiveness, practicality 
and all the pushing faults of our young democ- 
racy, has nevertheless the innate shyness of its 
youth and of its singleness of purpose. All 
its hope is that it may have helped to alleviate 
suffering and advance the hour of victory. 



vi Preface 

For this reason, no names of Red Cross 
workers will be found in the pages of this 
book. They have acted merely as the repre- 
sentatives of our Red Cross in France and are 
by their own request anonymous. 

The author regrets only that thanks can not 
be given where due to the many colleagues — 
and many of them in inconspicuous positions — 
whose help has made this record possible. 

The Author. 

Paris, 
February, 1919. 



NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 



IT has been the aim of the soldier-artists 
of France to publish to all the world the 
desecration of her ancient monuments and 
cherished soil. To this fact we owe the re- 
markable series of woodcuts, etchings and 
paintings of her ruins, from which we have 
drawn freely for this record. Here, as in 
every manifestation of life, the French 
have found beauty also. As M. Georges 
d'Esparbes writes in the preface to that rare 
album, "Noyon, Guiscard, Ham," by M. 
Armand Gueritte, "When I had under my 
eyes the aquafortes which M. Gueritte has 
portrayed of his countryside in the in- 
vaded territory, a great pity pierced me before 
that aspect of the motherland, of which these 
drawings showed me the wounds. I did not 
see beyond that: my country destroyed. . . . 

vii 



viii Note on the Illustrations 

If this work is so lovely, it is because we 
divine that its purpose is, above all, to be of 
use, and that purpose renders it again lovelier; 
because its reason for being is perhaps the 
highest reason of art." 

The same purpose, from a constructive 
point of view, has animated French architects. 
Plans for French reconstruction have kept 
pace with German destruction. Hence we 
have series such as that of M. Georges Wybo, 
from which, by permission, we have drawn 
our chapter headings: "Reflexions et Croquis 
sur 1' Architecture au Pays de France." "In 
order to protect a patrimony which is dear to 
us," M. Wybo has drawn these examples of 
typical regional architecture. They will serve 
as an inspiration in rebuilding the ruins. 

When our soldiers pass through the rural 
districts of France, they may see in the village 
halls, if they will, posters of welcome bearing 
the legends: "Peasants of France, salute the 
soldiers of free America who come by the mil- 
lions to mingle their blood with that of our 



Note on the Illustrations ix 

sons, to preserve us in the right to cultivate 
our fields, and to prevent the barbarians from 
depriving us of our hard-won liberties," or 
"The Heart of America. In the interior, as 
with the armies, no suffering is a matter of in- 
difference to the American Red Cross." 

Conversely, American artists, such as Miss 
A. M. Upjohn, have made their contribution 
to France. The fidelity, the sympathy of her 
portraits are those not alone of the artist, but 
of the relief worker who has lived among and 
loved the peasants of devastated France. 



CHAPTER 


PAGE 
1 


II. To Win the War . 


21 


III. The Field op Opportunity 


. 29 


IV. The Plan: Organization . 


. 39 


V. The Plan: Administration 


. 52 


VI. The Plan: Cooperation . 


. 60 


VII. Cooperation in Practice . 


. 72 




91 


IX. "Polishing the Tarnished Mirror 


s" . 108 


X. Behind the British Lines 


. 121 




132 


XII. Our Presence With Them 


. 145 


XIII. The Road to Verdun 


. 156 


XIV. The Prefect op the Frontier 


. 175 


XV. The Flags of Victory 


. 191 




213 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

Frontispiece 
Upjohn 



Refugee from Hazebrouck, aged 92 

A. M 

In Front of the Church at Saint-Cernin * 

Georges Wybo 

A Poor Village of France 

Old Fortifications at Antibes * . 

A War Orphan of Brittany . 

Noyon, in April 1917* 

A House in Noyon 



. Jean Perrier 

. Georges Wybo 

. A. M. Upjohn 

Georges Wybo 

Armand Gueritte 



Notre Dame, From St. Julien-le-Pauvre * 

Georges Wybo 

Bridge at Tours * . 

The Son of a Soldier, Paris . 

Public Fountain at Noyon * . 

Ruins of Contalmaison, Somme 

Municipal Offices at Urrugne * 

The Chateau, Ham 

A Street in Guiscard 

Onvillers Church, Santerre * Georges Wybo 



Georges Wybo 
A. M. Upjohn 
Georges Wybo 
Paul Mansard 
Georges Wybo 



1 

9 

21 

23 
29 
37 

39 

52 
55 
60 
69 

72 



Laon Cathedral * 



Armand Gueritte 87 



91 



Georges Wybo 108 



* Reflexions et Croquis sur V Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wybo. 
Bachette et Cie., Paris. 

xiii 



xiv Illustrations 

PAQH 

The Mill on the Somme, Ham] . _ . 

. f Armand Gueritte 111 

A Street in Ham . . .J 

House on the Luce Plateau (near Amiens) * 

Georges Wtbo 121 

Lowland Farm (near Soissons) * Georges Wybo 132 
Street in Fontenoy * . . Georges Wybo 145 

Born in Flight from Lens, 1914 . A. M. Upjohn 147 
Village Hall at Fismes * . . Georges Wybo 156 
Market at Montrejeau * (Comminges) 

Georges Wybo 175 

Church of Flirey, Meurthe-Moselle 

Lucy Garnot 179 

Saint-Cyr (near Dourdan) * . Georges Wybo 191 
Telegraph Corps Putting up Wires, Noyon 

Armand Gueritte 195 

Map 214 



* inflexions et Croquis sur V Architecture o« Pays de France: Georges Wybo. 
Eachette et Cie., Parte. 



HELPING FRANCE 




In Front of the Church at Saint-Cernin. 

Reflexions et Croquis sur V Architecture au Pays de France: Georgea Wybo. 
Hachette et Cie., Paris. 

HELPING FRANCE 



CHAPTER I 



HOME SERVICE 



IF there is one division above all others of 
the American Red Cross activities for the 
soldier which the American Expeditionary 
Force in France holds dear, it is, I venture 
to state, that of the Bureau of Home Service. 
Many a soldier is anxious over wife or sweet- 
heart, or aged parents, left, too often, without 



2 Helping France 

adequate means of support, or unheard from, 
it may be for months. The Home Service 
bridges the thousands of miles of silence, and 
relieves suspense with aid, or best of all, with 
information. Infinite pains are taken in this 
service; millions of dollars spent. To what 
end? Primarily that the American soldier, 
freed of anxiety, may be a more efficient 
pawn in the great game of war. 

It is also, I venture to state, in its role of 
home service, that is, of service to the sol- 
dier's family, that the American Red Cross 
has made its most valuable contribution to 
the French Army as well, and to the French 
nation during the war. For it is in terms of 
home service that the activities of the Depart- 
ment of Civilian Relief of the American Red 
Cross in France can best be interpreted to 
America. It is according to the moral even 
more than to the material evaluation of this 
service that the millions of Red Cross mem- 
bers, who have by their sacrifices and their 
contributions made it possible, should take 



"Home Service" 3 

stock of their contribution to the Great 
War. 

Picture to yourself the mental state of a 
French soldier mobilized hastily in 1914 in 
the northern regions of France, so soon over- 
run and so tenaciously held by the enemy. 
Multiply him by thousands. Send him 
through the campaigns of the Marne, of the 
bitterly contested Chemin des Dames, of the 
defense of Verdun, if you will, and bring him 
thus to the little hamlet whence he started. 
What will he find? What did he find? I 
quote from an eye witness,* whose company 
was just going into repose after twenty-two 
days in the front line trenches, twenty-two 
days in the "hell of Verdun." They saw, 
along the road, "a modest house, which had 
been disemboweled by an exploding shell. 
Its steps were half demolished, its blinds hung 
crazily; the gaping windows showed the emp- 
tiness of the interior. 'My house,' cried a 
man suddenly, and darted in. It was not 

* Raymond Joubert: Verdun. 



4 Helping France 

difficult to do, since the wicket of the little 
garden, held in place by only one hinge, 
flapped to and fro in the wind. 

"The man, when we saw him again," con- 
tinued the narrator, "was all agog, his arms 
waving, his body convulsed with hilarious 
surprise. Everything was reduced to dust in 
his house, and methodically and minutely 
destroyed. He had good cause to laugh! 
He would never have believed his misfortune 
so complete." 

And what of his family, his wife, his chil- 
dren, his parents? In every case, one of two 
things had happened. They had either re- 
mained to be taken prisoners by the Germans, 
or they had fled before them, fugitives. All 
degrees of misery are comprised in these two 
classifications. They make the subject mat- 
ter of two main divisions of our Red Cross 
civilian relief; that of rehabilitation, acting 
in the devastated area, and that of refugees, 
following the families in their dispersion into 
every department of France. Yet there can 



"Home Service" 5 

be no hard and fast distinction; for civilian 
prisoners, sent into slavery in Germany and 
later shipped back by the thousands daily, 
became refugees; and there were thousands 
more, refugees from destroyed villages, gath- 
ered into the larger as yet undestroyed centers 
in the devastated territory itself. In short, 
the story of rehabilitation in the devastated 
area, which is all the present volume pre- 
tends to, is the story in epitome, of all Red 
Cross home service in France. 

Civilian prisoners! America has heard of 
them, and shuddered at the revival by Ger- 
many of the methods of pre-Christian war- 
fare, in this twentieth century. "You have 
sat at the funeral of dear sons," cried a mem- 
ber of the Belgian Relief Commission work- 
ing on the German side of the lines, "But you 
have never sat at the funeral of a city."* 
And he goes on to describe in poignant terms 
the first levy of the citizens of Mons. All the 
night, after the deportation, he walked the 

* John H. Gade: National Geographic Magazine. 



6 Helping France 

streets of that stricken city, unable to sleep, 
equally unable to escape from the shrieks of 
the bereaved. Mons, Valenciennes, Lille and 
a score of others — their sorrows were the same. 
Counting the last and most infamous de- 
portation of fourteen thousand young lads 
and graybeards just before the armistice, 
there were forty thousand old men and 
women, young men and maidens carried into 
slavery from Lille alone. "I saw," says an 
eye witness of this last atrocity, "I saw, in 
August, 1914, our valorous regiments set 
forth for the war. I saw, in October, 1918, the 
interminable columns of civilians set forth 
into exile, and I remarked in the latter, at 
the end of four years of weakening occupa- 
tion, as in the former, on the threshold of 
glory, the same bearing, the same faith, the 
same valiance, the same anxiety to do honor 
to France, and to proclaim on high its heroism 
and its mighty vitality."* The words of the 
Old Testament recur like a dirge: "How 

* Pierre Bosc : Les Allemands k Lille. 



"Home Service" 7 

doth the city sit solitary that was full of 
people, how is she become a widow that was 
great among the nations, and princess among 
the provinces, how is she become tribu- 
tary!" 

Lille was a great manufacturing city, form- 
ing with Roubaix and Turcoing, her neighbors 
and companions in misfortune, the pre-war 
triumvirate of textile industries in France. 
Arras, Cambrai, Lille, famous in our ears 
to-day as landmarks in the flux of battles, 
were formerly famous for the productions to 
which they gave their names, arras, cambric, 
and lisle. "Even the Sultan knew well the 
tapestries of Arras,"* in the fourteenth cen- 
tury. 

Yet it is not in the destroyed cities, not even 
in Soissons or Reims, rich in historic associa- 
tions — though these are referred to as "mur- 
dered" — that the heart of France is cen- 
tered. The cities of the Northern provinces 
grew up out of the small industries of the vil- 

* Albert Demangeon: La Picardie. 



8 Helping France 

lages. Lille, Arras, Amiens, all took the 
produce of the country, the flax, the wool of 
the flocks, even the lucid waters of the Somme, 
as the raw material of their wealth. To a 
larger extent than most manufacturing cen- 
ters, they depend still for their hands — or did 
before the war — on the winter leisure of 
the farmers. North, south, east, west, 
wherever you go in France, it is the land 
that is the source of individual, of national 
wealth. 

The land and the people, they are inex- 
tricably bound together. Books are written 
explaining the character of the peasant (pay- 
san) by the character of the locality (pays) 
which has bred him, and his fathers and 
grandfathers before him. The texture of the 
soil, the nature of the crop, have determined 
the routine of his life, the style of his building, 
the temper of his soul. Two-thirds to nine- 
tenths of the farmlands in the invaded de- 
partments are owned by the farmers them- 
selves. Of these, the small farmers or peas- 



Wmn 








^mjrw^0™ m * tiS fism mUf^l 






SB wit 






Hi|lra 




■KSSa 


ISfHi??^ rvii'i^ 








W^j^^S^''-j'/^M 



A Poor Village of France. 

L'n Pauvre Village de France: Rene Benjamin. Woodcuts by Jean Perrier. 
G. Weil & Co., Paris. 



"Home Service" 9 

ants make up the bulk, "each family having 
its house, its land, and passing on to the chil- 
dren its home, its traditions, its agricultural 
implements . " * The family, the home (foyer) , 
the locality (pays), the land; these are the 
cumulative passions which blend and fire 
the patriotism of France. You will hear not 
so often "beautiful France," as the "beau- 
tiful land of France." You will hear one 
Frenchman ask another "Of what pays are 
you?" In the Marseillaise itself — though not 
alas! in the English translation — the soldier 
fights to rid the furrows of the hated in- 
vader. The invaded region, despoiled, pro- 
faned, is "notre grande blessee, la terre de 
France." The very apple trees, girdled and 
dying, have a personality; the villages are 
"assassinated;" the windowless houses are 
"blind." 

This love of the land, one finds it in France 
the basis not only of defense but of reconstruc- 
tion. Mme. Moreau, President of the Vil- 

* Albert Demangeon: La Picardie. 



io Helping France 

lages Liber6s, notable among the associations 
for reconstruction formed by French women, 
says in addressing her colleagues: "In this 
task we, women of the frontier, have the part 
Providence has given us. This work is woven 
with our lives and mingles itself with our mem- 
ories, our affections, with the heavy respon- 
sibilities of our situation. It is not ours to 
assume it or not to assume it. It imposes 
itself. Who then will raise again the family 
home, restore our fields, our vines, replant 
for our little children the woods which our 
grandfathers have planted, if it is not we? 
The names of villages and the corners of farms, 
which in the Communique's are only names, 
we have known since our infancy every stone 
and every spring of them — and all that we 
love there is gone. Whether we belong to 
the Marches of Lorraine with my compatriot, 
the blessed Joan of Arc, to the Nord, to the 
country of Soissons, to the Marne, or to the 
Ardennes, we have the honor to be of the 
chosen land, the land of the front, and I say 



"Home Service" n 

it proudly, we, we, too, belong to the Twen- 
tieth Corps."* 

Again, listen to the plea of the Justice of 
the Peace of Combles, sent in 1917 to the 
American Red Cross. "Ladies and Gentle- 
men of Free America" he begins, "I have the 
honor to call to your attention one of the most 
unfortunate regions of France, devastated 
and destroyed by more than two years of war 
— the village of Combles, chief town of a 
Canton composed of twenty-one communes in 
the department of the Somme. ... If a 
journey is made at the present time through 
these regions, so alive and so fertile before the 
war, but now so desolate, nothing is to be 
seen but a vast chalky plain, quite white and 
everywhere reduced to powder. The ground 
which had a fertile soil of one meter in depth, 
has been completely turned up and the shells 
and the machine guns have brought to the 
surface the subsoil of pebbly chalk. This 
soil, which is now mixed with all sorts of rub- 

* Report. 



12 Helping France 

bish and scraps of shells, will take more than 
fifty years to recover its fertility. 

"Shall I relate to you, ladies and gentle- 
men, the sufferings, the endurance, the cour- 
age and heroism displayed by the unfortu- 
nate inhabitants of Combles and of the com- 
munes of Hardecourt-aux-Bois, Guillemont, 
Ginchy, Maurepas, and later of Morval, 
Rancourt, Sailly-Sallisel (the first-mentioned 
places situated on the Front opposite the 
Anglo-French positions established at Mari- 
court), the courage displayed in the face of 
such misfortunes and destruction and in the 
midst of vexations and violence of all sorts 
to which they were subjected? 

"Maricourt! a village ever to be remember- 
ed, which a very ancient tradition speaks of as 
consecrated to the Virgin, curtis Marice (Vil- 
lage of Marie). This village has, in fact, 
never been trodden under foot by the invad- 
ing hordes, neither in 1870 nor in the present 
war! 

"When the Bavarians and other Germans 



"Home Service" 13 

boasted that by means of renewed attacks they 
would succeed in taking the village, the women 
of Combles replied proudly : * You will not take 
Maricourt, not even a brick of it!' and the 
village and its trenches stood out against all 
the attacks of the Germans in 1914, 1915, 
1916! Its defenders were intrepid and the 
place remained impregnable. 

"William II and the Crown Prince them- 
selves came to Combles, accompanied by 
Staff Officers of their allies, and pointed out to 
the latter the difficulty of taking the position. 

"Numerous Bavarian regiments were used 
up in their fruitless attempts, renewed from 
month to month for more than two years, to 
take this village. The discouraged men re- 
maining from these regiments were sent to 
other fronts. They were replaced by Prus- 
sian regiments who, more obstinate or better 
trained, wished to excel the Bavarians, but 
they in their turn were destroyed. Thou- 
sands of them lay in front of the Anglo-French 
trenches at Maricourt. 



14 Helping France 

"During these alternate attacks and regular 
battles in which the villages of Guillemont, 
Ginchy, Maurepas, Hardecourt were under 
fire from the heavy guns, the population of 
Combles, continuously on the qui vive, was 
a prey to every kind of anguish. 

"Many a time we hoped to see our victo- 
rious soldiers reach our town. We heard the 
French drums sounding the charge, we heard 
the reply of their artillery and their heavy 
fire, then the heavy guns hidden in the woods 
above Combles hurled their shells at our regi- 
ments which, in their eagerness, had drawn 
too close. Too frequently, in the middle of 
the night, when the troops had broken through 
the enemy and were rapidly advancing on 
Combles, violent storms occurred followed by 
torrential rain which soaked the hills and the 
valleys, and stopped dead the advance of our 
men who could thus no longer be seconded by 
their artillery. Then silence and darkness 
would reign again. For us, the hope of deliv- 
erance was once more lost, and we were happy 



"Home Service" 15 

if on the following morning we did not see 
the arrival of twenty or thirty French or Eng- 
lish soldiers, harassed and with torn uniforms 
covered with blood and mud and escorted by 
Boche soldiers who led them away, prisoners, 
down the High street of Combles. 

"These unfortunate prisoners were abso- 
lutely forbidden to speak to us, but we said a 
sympathetic word to them in a low voice. 
The greater part of them did not look dejected 
or discouraged, but rather indignant at hav- 
ing to submit to such captivity, and a gleam of 
courage and hope was still to be seen in their 
eyes, like heroes whom Fortune had be- 
trayed! 

"Over the six kilometres which separated 
Maricourt and Hardecourt from Combles 
the same tragedies were frequently renewed 
during the darkest nights, when the Germans 
opened furious attacks to surprise first the 
advance posts and then the trenches of Mari- 
court. What struggles, what hecatombs by 
thousands! According to German officers, 



i6 Helping France 

there were heaps of corpses of soldiers and 
horses to the height of a man between the 
fronts of the two armies. More than thirty 
thousand of their soldiers were thrown pele- 
mele and buried in the quarries between 
Hardecourt-aux-Bois and Maricourt. Their 
wounded were continually passing through to 
the hospitals established at Combles. The 
tombs of soldiers and officers increased the 
size of the cemetery threefold. The bodies 
of superior officers were transported from 
Combles to Peronne, to be sent to their fam- 
ilies in Germany. 

"Our heroes, who have died for their coun- 
try, and for the emancipation and liberty of 
nations, also sleep by thousands at Harde- 
court and Carnoy, where the struggle was 
so obstinate, and on all this part of the 
banks of the Somme, which they have 
bathed with their blood, where they have 
left their bones, to arrest the vandals of 
Germany ! 

"But the day of our departure and of our 



"Home Service" 17 

forced evacuation, was also the prelude to 
the destruction of Combles ! 

"On the 28th of June, 1916, after a bom- 
bardment which raged for five days and five 
nights, the inhabitants were obliged to leave 
their unfortunate town, abandoning to the 
cupidity of the enemy everything which we 
had been able during the previous two years to 
retain in our dwellings — everything we pos- 
sessed in the way of furniture, bedding, cloth- 
ing, silver, books, pictures, family heirlooms — 
in fact everything that was precious remain- 
ing to us. It was only on the follow- 
ing 25th of September that Combles was 
finally occupied by the Anglo-French troops 
who took possession of it after terrible strug- 
gles. 

"Fifteen hundred wounded Germans were 
found in the vast subterranean quarters 
twenty meters in depth, the entrance to which 
was situated in the center of the town, and 
more than six hundred prisoners were at the 
same time captured in the borough which 



1 8 Helping France 

had been surrounded on all sides by the 
Allied troops. 

"The Germans retired to the north towards 
Sailly-Sallisel and continued the bombard- 
ment of what remained of Combles, in order 
to hinder the advance of the Anglo-French 
armies. 

" The town being thus successively under the 
fire and crushed by the shells of both armies, 
was converted into a mass of ruins, to such 
an extent that it would be difficult to recog- 
nize the sites of its principal houses, its public 
monuments, the church — several centuries 
old — the town hall, schools, squares, and old 
streets. 

"For more than two years, either at Com- 
bles or in the northern region to which we were 
evacuated, and where we were still under the 
German domination, I have personally en- 
countered the same dangers, endured the 
same sufferings, and the most trying vexations 
after having lost practically all that I pos- 
sessed and seen my family dispersed, two of 



"Home Service" 19 

my children having been wounded and the 
third being at present on the battle front. 

"I appeal therefore, Ladies and Gentle- 
men, for your generous intervention in favor 
of our town of Combles and its communes 
which, by their long martyrdom and their 
courage, have well deserved universal sym- 
pathy. 

"You will thus contribute, Ladies and 
Gentlemen of Free America, of the Great Sis- 
ter Republic, to the renewal of our valiant 
rural population and to the re-establishment 
of Our France, with whom you are entering 
into the struggle for the triumph of justice, 
of the liberty of nations and of the future of 
humanity." 

Alas! the commune of Combles, even the 
impregnable "Village of Mary" fell to the 
invaders in the spring of 1918. But its 
appeal is typical of the touching confidence of 
France in her sister ally. In answering the 
spirit of such an appeal, America has builded 
even better than she knew. She has asked, 



20 Helping France 

through her Red Cross, to be admitted 
into the very heart of France, into that place 
doubly sacred in France from the intrusions of 
strangers — the home. And she has been 
doubly welcomed. In the words of Mme. 
Eduard Fuster, who has given invaluable 
service in guiding the policies of the American 
Red Cross: "You have come here not only 
to help us win the war, but to share with us 
all our burdens, all our sufferings; those of 
the front and those of the trenches, and those 
also behind the lines. . . . All the victims of 
war have laid their problems before you, all 
our sorrows have found an echo in your 
hearts." 




Old Fortifications at Antibes. 

Reflexions et Croquis sur I' Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wyoo, 
Hachette et Cie., Paris. 

CHAPTER II 



TO WIN THE WAR 

THE American Red Cross is, like the 
present American Army, young. Al- 
though the Geneva Convention, called in 1863, 
was signed by fourteen nations in 1864, Amer- 
ica did not sign it until 1882, and it was only 
in 1905 that the volunteer organization styled 
the American Red Cross was established by 

21 



22 Helping France 

Act of Congress as the official relief organiza- 
tion of the United States. Its purpose as 
then defined is: "To continue and carry out 
a system of national and international relief 
in time of peace and to apply the same in 
mitigating the sufferings caused by pestilence, 
famine, fire, floods and other great national 
calamities and to devise and carry on measures 
for preventing the same." 

But the Red Cross is not so young as the 
American Army in its intervention in France. 
Prior to our entering the war, it had already 
its representative in the field in the form of the 
American Relief Clearing House, through 
which contributions in money and in supplies 
were shipped and distributed for two years. 
The American public was already familiar 
with pleas on its behalf, such as that made by 
President Wilson in January, 1917: "Another 
winter closes around the great European 
struggle, and with the cold, there comes 
greater need among soldiers in the fighting 
line, and in the hospitals, and still more 




A War Orphan of Brittany. 



To Win the War 23 

among the women and children in ruined 
homes or in exile." 

Yet it remained for the declaration of war 
to develop the astounding resources which 
the conscience and the imagination of the 
American people placed at the disposal of 
the Red Cross. The preparation of the Army 
was not more swift nor more far sighted than 
that of its service of mercy. A war council 
of seven members, created May 10, 1917, 
placed the organization on a war basis. The 
Chairman of that Council brought to it a name 
renowned in the business world. The cam- 
paign drives of the Red Cross, resulting in the 
collecting of $350,000,000, attest not only the 
generosity, but the confidence of the nation 
in the integrity and sagacity of the adminis- 
tration of those funds. The membership of 
the organization leapt into the millions; 
the American Red Cross became what the 
French were quick to call it — the expression 
of the heart of America toward France. 

For it was not to our own army, but to the 



24 Helping France 

needs of our Allies, particularly of France, that 
the initial service of our Red Cross was ded- 
icated. To us, in America, it seemed the 
logical, the tangible thing to do, to send the 
Red Cross personnel as an advance guard, 
an earnest of the army that was to follow. 
The civilian activities of the Red Cross at 
home, the contributions, already large, which 
we had made to the relief of Belgium and of 
France through other agencies, had accus- 
tomed us to look upon civilian relief in a 
foreign country as natural. 

Not so was our advent regarded by Europe. 
France welcomed us, but as something new, 
unheard of. Her response was enthusiastic 
in proportion to her wonder. Other allies 
had given of their treasure, and we must never 
forget, more largely than we, to the same 
cause; they had given what we had not yet 
had the opportunity to do, their millions of 
lives. But America brought for the first time 
in the history of the Red Cross, a war service 
in aid of civilians as well as of soldiers, — I 



To Win the War 25 

would say, for the first time in the history of 
nations. Private societies, such as the Eng- 
lish Quakers as far back as the Franco- 
Prussian War of 1871, rendered a similar ser- 
vice to France; in France, on the advent of 
the Red Cross, they and many other foreign- 
born organizations were already engaged in 
civilian relief. The significance of the entry 
of the American Red Cross lay in the fact that 
it represented not a private agency, but the 
American Government. The President of the 
United States, as its president as well, spoke 
through it to the people of France. "Wher- 
ever these Red Cross men and women go," he 
said, "they are carrying the message that 
Americans cannot rest without seeking to 
relieve such suffering." The spirit with which 
they went to that service is equally illus- 
trated in the charge given by the Chairman 
of the War Council to one of the first groups 
to cross the ocean: "Make the French glad 
that you have come." 

Aside from the moral support which was 



26 Helping France 

doubtless given by the actual presence of their 
new ally in their midst — to which, from the 
day of our advent until now, the French press 
and people give tribute — there were sound 
military reasons why the Red Cross should 
add civilian to battlefield relief. War, never 
confined to the actual field of combat, has 
always caused destruction of property, and 
loss of civilian life. But never before has 
war been organized, nation against nation, as 
was the war which Germany organized and 
launched against the whole world, 
i When the heroic Mayor of Noyon, that 
ancient city where Charlemagne was crowned, 
protested against the infractions of the terms 
of the Hague convention by its German con- 
querors in 1914, he was told: "We are not 
making the war solely against the French 
Army: we are making it against the whole of 
France; our aim is to ruin it, to weaken it 
by every means possible. You complain of 
being pillaged; well, we consider every store, 
every unoccupied house as belonging to us: 



To Win the War 27 

where there are legal occupants, we are dis- 
posed, by indulgence, not to take more than 
is necessary for the well-being of the German 
army. If we spare ever so little the civil pop- 
ulation of the war, and do not compel them to 
undergo all its consequences, it is because we 
are not barbarians; such are our methods of 
war, the harder they are, the more inexorable, 
the shorter will be the war!"* 

It was the realization of this menace, driven 
home by the violation of Belgium, the sinking 
of merchantmen, the well-attested atrocities 
of Northern France, that arrayed the civilized 
world against the outlaw, Germany. The 
defense of civilization was being made over 
there, on the plains of Picardy, along the 
Chemin des Dames, in the forests of Ardennes, 
at Verdun. 

"Whatever may be the character of the 
American Red Cross in time of peace," said 
the first Commissioner to France of the Amer- 

*Noyon pendant l'occupation allemande: Ernest Noel, in La 
Revue Hebdomadaire. 



28 Helping France 

ican Red Cross, before the Anglo-American 
press on September 17, 1917, "to-day in the 
midst of this catastrophe, its supreme func- 
tion is to aid in every way possible the winning 
of the war. It would be a pitiable and mis- 
taken conception to regard it from the point 
of view of a charity at a moment like this. 
For three years our Allies have taken upon 
themselves our part in the battle. They have 
carried all the burden of anguish, they have 
suffered all the wounds, they have died for 
our sakes. It is inevitable that some time 
must yet elapse before our troops can play 
their part seriously in the trenches. Mean- 
time, the American organizations should claim 
it not only as a privilege, but as a strict obliga- 
tion, to do all that is in their power to aid the 
valiant nations to whom our people are so 
deeply indebted." 




Noyon, in April 1917. 

Reflexions et Croquis sur V Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wybo. 
Hachette et Cie., Paris. 



CHAPTER III 



THE FIELD OF OPPORTUNITY 



THE American Red Cross Commission 
arrived in France in June, 1917. It 
consisted of eighteen members, each con- 
tributing some special part toward the great 
end in view, the winning of the war. Battle- 
field relief, it was understood, would be ef- 
fected immediately under the supervision of 
the War Department, but "civilian relief 
will present a field of increasing opportunity 

£9 



30 Helping France 

in which the Red Cross organization is espe- 
cially adapted to serve.' * 

In the devastated area, which bounds the 
horizon of the present narrative, the field 
was indeed ample, and the opportunity ripe. 
One cannot picture wholesale destruction. 
Not even an eye witness of it, mile after mile, 
and village after village, can have the con- 
cept of it which would be his were the cottage 
razed, the village decimated, the region 
ruined, the country fought for, his own. Not 
only so, but that part of Northern France 
overtaken by perfidy in 1914, was, historically, 
the home of France. The modern names of 
the departments involved: the Nord and the 
Ardennes, completely swallowed up, the Pas- 
de-Calais, the Somme, the Aisne, the Oise, 
the Meuse, the Meurthe and Moselle, and the 
frontier of the Vosges, scenes for four years of 
gigantic struggle,— these revolutionary appella- 
tions lose completely their savour of an- 
tiquity. But let us mention the provinces of 
Artois, of Picardy, of Champagne, of Lor- 



The Field of Opportunity 31 

raine, of the He de France, whence came the 
very name of the French nation, and there 
move before our eyes like a pageant the me- 
dieval powers, the spiritual dominions, the 
literary glory which have made the France 
of to-day. One of our soldiers, stationed 
near Domremy, was asked by a Frenchman, 
who was showing him about, if he knew Joan 
of Arc. "Sure," was the response, "I went 
to school Hth her." "And when was that?" 
inquire^ che astonished Frenchman. "In 
1429," he replied. Whether many of our 
privates, like this one, have gone to school 
with French history or not, the children of 
France have done so generation by generation. 
Even a geography is not complete without its 
political account of the soil. Soissons, Reims, 
the Marches of Lorraine, the Santerre of 
Picardy, now laid in ruins, yet stand as rep- 
resentatives of the ideals of a race. 

Figures convey their picture of economic 
destruction. The devastated area, in its 
entirety, covered — and covers at the present 



32 Helping France 

moment — six thousand square miles of France. 
It comprised that area most thickly populated, 
richest in manufactures, and richest in agri- 
culture. One quarter of the wheat crop was 
formerly raised in it. Eighty-seven per cent 
of the beets from which France derived her 
sugar came from it. 2,000,000 people had made 
in it their homes. In it were the> deposits of 
iron, of potash and of coal, greedily coveted 
by Germany; so much so, that the possession 
of them became that military necessity which 
turned into a scrap of paper the neutrality 
of Belgium and of Luxembourg. 

This area, varying with the fortune of bat- 
tles, consisted, in June, 1917, of the territory 
still in the hands of the Germans, of the actual 
front, and of the territory from which the 
Germans had been driven out. The former 
was being cared for, as well as it could be in 
captivity, by the Dutch and Spanish dele- 
gates who took over the operation of our Bel- 
gian Relief Commission on our entry into the 
war. The front, at least fifteen miles in 



The Field of Opportunity 33 

depth at any given point, was reserved for 
military operations. Back of this front were 
situated the "regions liberees," of civilian 
relief. They extended in a broad swathe a 
hundred miles long by thirty wide, up the 
valley of the Marne. They paralleled the 
road to Verdun. They lay in a fringe along 
the northern border of the frontier provinces 
of the Meurthe and Moselle and the Vosges. 
Most recently uncovered, and hence offering 
the clearest opportunity, they comprised the 
1580 square miles of the Somme, the Aisne 
and the Oise cleared of the Germans in the 
"Great Retreat" of March, 1917. It was 
to this area that the American Red Cross first 
turned its attention. A preliminary survey 
was made. 

Contrast may help to picture what the 
Commission saw. In a certain classic on 
agriculture,* may be found this description 
of the regions through which the Commission- 
ers passed. "They comprise those orchard 

Albert Demangeon : La Picardie. 



34 Helping France 

lands, gardens and vineyards picturesquely 
mingling with, or bordering a field of wheat, a 
patch of vegetables., a bit of clover, a cluster 
of vines, often tilled by the spade, by a race of 
petty farmers. The division of the soil is 
pushed to the extent that the trees of the one 
owner overhang the property of the other; 
beneath the tangle of apple trees, of pears, of 
peaches, of apricots, of plums, of cherries and 
of nuts oftentimes trellised, are hidden a 
thousand varied crops which succeed one 
another without lapse; here the asparagus 
and the grapes of Laon; there the artichokes 
and the string beans of Noyon, everywhere, as 
far as Clermont, all the lucrative products of 
intensive culture, which have given to the 
valley of Therain between Clermont and Creil 
the name of the "Vale of Gold" (Vallee 
Doree). Nothing can equal the charm of 
those sunny and verdant slopes, at the same 
time orchards and gardens, their roads deep 
rutted by the coming and going of the laborers' 
heavy boots. This aspect of nature fresh 



The Field of Opportunity 35 

and picturesque, this culture minute and 
varied, separates us widely from those plains 
of immense and monotonous toil where the 
eye loses itself at the horizon above the 
fields of grain." 

A writer of greater power passed this way 
in the summer of 1917. "In Egypt, behind 
the quarries on the Nile, there is a place as 
desolate where nothing living moves. But 
this is France — dear, rich, green France — 
this scorched and arid desert, with the cruel 
gaping wound torn in her fair side. This is 
France — and it is full summertime! Weeds 
and poppies and grasses, poppies and grasses 
and weeds, trenches and broken wagon wheels, 
a nightmare of ugly things. And here a pitiful 
group of crosses — and there another, tens of 
them, hundreds of them, close to the road. . . . 

" Come now and look from this mount. 

" A livid sky — a forest of blackened stumps 
and poles and the interminable stretch of 
weeds — nothing but this as far as the eye can 
see. 



36 Helping France 

"Here you should count three hundred 
villages, with each a little church. 

"Villages? — Churches? — not even heaps of 
stones remain to mark their sepulchres. 

"Gone— blotted out."* 

Yet this is not the whole picture. There 
are intermediate tones. Not only were there 
such communes, like Combles, caught and 
crushed between opposing artillery, there were 
the greater number too quickly taken by the 
Germans to have suffered bombardment. 
Each, except for certain centers of refuge, suf- 
fered the same fate, to be held for a varying 
period, to be depopulated by successive de- 
portations, to be sacked and finally to be 
systematically destroyed. 

"The Germans, when they retreated in 
March, 1917, certainly believed that they 
had thrown insurmountable difficulties in our 
path. They left behind them smashed bridges 
and roads ripped up by tremendous explosions, 
which sometimes, as in Licourt, caused craters 

* Elinor Glyn: Destruction. Duckworth & Co., London. 




A House in Noyon. 

Apres le Recul Allemand, Mars 1917. Noyon, Guiscard, Ham: Armand 
Gueritte. Vernant & Dulle, Imprimeurs, Paris. 



The Field of Opportunity 37 

fifty feet across and fifty feet deep. Some 
regions were flooded. Trees cut down across 
the highways were to be an obstacle to imme- 
diate pursuit. . And far behind the fighting 
lines, the enemy placed fields of barbed wire. 
Every bit of ground which had any strategic 
importance was fortified, trenched and camou- 
flaged for the eventual battles and for a pro- 
longed resistance." 

"They slyly prepared other ambushes which 
were to add to the effect of the obstacles in 
the path of the French troops. Their massing 
of the entire civil population which was not 
sent back to Germany, all the useless mouths, 
into certain villages which were, relatively 
speaking, spared, ■ was a military maneuver 
whose true purpose was not intuitively recog- 
nized by our incurable and candid generosity. 
We regarded it for a moment as a sort of man- 
ifestation of German pity! But it was all 
brutally clear when, immediately after the 
retreat, in the terrible confusion of battle, 
we had to feed those home-coming French 



38 Helping France 

people suffering unimaginable distress. Little 
towns whose normal population was from 
three to five hundred saw these figures mul- 
tiplied by five; at Roye more than six thou- 
sand people were without food; at Chauny 
the frightened population at first received our 
troops, whose uniform they did not recog- 
nize, with stupor; at Ham it was again the 
army which had to provide improvised sup- 
plies. There was no means of communica- 
tion; there was nothing on the spot, the Ger- 
mans having taken everything away; the 
regions which had been spared were in total 
isolation in the midst of a desert, where noth- 
ing disturbed the horrible solitude except the 
whirl of neighboring battles."* 

*Le Temps, Jan. 6, 1918. 




Notre Dame, From St. Julien-le-Pauvre. 

Reflexions et Croquis sur V Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wybo. 
Hachette et Cie., Paris. 



CHAPTER IV 



the plan: organization 

SUCH was the immediate field of oppor- 
tunity presented to the American Red 
Cross. Its needs were patent. Housing was 
necessary, food was necessary, the revival of 
agriculture and of industries was necessary. 
What few doctors were left in the region had 
been deported by the Germans; even med- 
icines had been packed in the great vans that 
bore every mobile article of value away. Doc- 

39 



40 Helping France 

tors were necessary for the children and the 
old people insufficiently nourished and ab- 
normally depressed. The cure's had shared 
the fate of the doctors. Spiritual and moral 
encouragement, the restoration of normal 
life — these were the things most necessary 
of all. 

But, as has been said, the American Red 
Cross did not have its chosen field to itself. 
Its first problem of organization was to deter- 
mine its relation to the many agencies already 
operating in the devastated area, some of them 
since the beginning of the war. They grouped 
themselves in three classes: governmental, 
military, and private. There was no question 
of the place of the American Red Cross in 
regard to the two former. It came to France 
by invitation from the French Government; 
it would work in the army zone only by con- 
sent of the armies of occupation. Its duty 
was to subordinate its purpose to that of the 
government and of the army, and to place its 
resources at their disposal. But the third 



The Plan: Organization 41 

group, that of private agencies, presented 
matter for careful study. 

The American societies, up to the time of 
the arrival of the American Red Cross, had 
accomplished their work for the French army 
and for French civilians under the authoriza- 
tion of the French Government. In fact, they 
were incorporated in the Service de Sante of 
the French Army. What was to be the rela- 
tion between these groups, already established, 
and the American Red Cross? The status of 
the American Relief Clearing House, the fore- 
runner and official representative of the Red 
Cross in France, was a determining factor in 
the policy finally adopted. 

This was " an organization which came into 
existence during the early months of the war, 
for the purpose of relieving the confusion into 
which relief supplies coming from America 
had been thrown, and of expediting their dis- 
tribution to those in need. It was found that 
without some organization devoted especially 
to these purposes, the relief of which the suf- 



42 Helping France 

ferers were in such urgent need, was sub- 
jected to great delay in reaching them; that 
it was frequently misdirected through lack 
of proper information on the part of the 
senders; that through ignorance of the for- 
malities of French ports, supplies were fre- 
quently denied entry altogether; and that 
quite as often for various reasons many val- 
uable gifts were lost. 

"The purpose of the organization is there- 
fore to centralize and control as far as pos- 
sible at Paris the receipt of all relief from 
America destined for France and her Allies, as 
the most convenient point for distribution: 

"To investigate the needs of all localities, 
to keep the New York office informed as to 
the requirements of different districts and by 
constant advice to prevent overlapping and 
duplication. 

"To clear at all points of entry all goods 
consigned from America. 

"To forward to destination, without undue 
delay, all goods received and, through the 



The Plan: Organization 43 

facilities offered by the French Government, 
to expedite the transshipment of goods cleared 
from Port of Entry and to require receipts 
from consignees at point of final destination. 

"To secure from the French authorities 
free transportation both by sea and by rail in 
France of all goods destined for relief, and, 
therefore, to minimize the expenses incident 
to the work of all relief societies co-operating 
with the Clearing House. 

"To distribute to best advantage, accord- 
ing to our information as to actual present 
needs, any relief that may be entrusted to the 
discretion of the Clearing House for this pur- 
pose; and to keep and render strict account of 
the same. 

"The functions of the Clearing House 
briefly are: 

"1. To forward to destination all relief 
supplies sent through it consigned to partic- 
ular societies; 

"2. To receive and distribute relief sup- 
plies where most needed; 



44 Helping France 

"3. To receive money and to purchase 
supplies either with or without definite in- 
structions as to distribution; 

"4. To provide these facilities free of all 
expense to the donors."* 

The American Red Cross automatically 
absorbed the American Relief Clearing House 
and its functions. Its Director General be- 
came the Director General of the Red Cross, 
and a number of its prominent officers took 
positions of responsibility in the new organi- 
zation. At the same time, the policy of the 
Red Cross toward all the organizations, 
French, American or British, subsidized to 
any degree by the Clearing House under- 
went a radical change. Whereas the Clearing 
House had assumed the responsibility of for- 
warding supplies and money to particular 
destinations, the Red Cross hastened to state 
that it considered its function to be the im- 
partial distribution at its discretion of all 
supplies sent from America to the relief of 

* Report. 



The Plan: Organization 45 

France. The reasons for this change were 
two-fold. First, there was great inequality of 
distribution to the different organizations de- 
pendent on the Clearing House, varying with 
the size of the receiving society, and the 
effectiveness of its propaganda, rather than 
with the actual needs of the localities served. 
Second, and more vital, there was the cutting 
down of transportation facilities from America, 
incident to our active participation in the 
war. 

At first only nine hundred tons per month 
were allowed to the American Red Cross for 
all its activities, military as well as civilian, 
on United States transports, and the maximum 
reached at any time by allowance was four 
thousand tons. Although this amount was 
increased by space paid for whenever possible 
on regular merchantmen, the average ship- 
ment per month of Red Cross supplies from 
America during the war, stands at about 
the latter figure, four thousand tons. Not 
only was the Red Cross thus made account- 



46 Helping France 

able to the home government for the amount 
of its[shipments. It had scrupulous obligations 
to the French Government, which, in the 
midst of its heavy transportation of men and 
supplies for actual fighting, gave free trans- 
portation in the interior to the supplies and the 
personnel of the American Red Cross as it had 
done to those of the Clearing House. 

Despite this limited tonnage, and the lim- 
ited railroad transportation, the American 
Red Cross was in duty bound to greatly in- 
crease the volume of its output over that of 
the Clearing House. It must go into the 
market to buy. But here again were restric- 
tions; the Army, French, British or Amer- 
ican, had always the precedence. Thus it 
came about that supplies and their proper 
distribution assumed such importance as to 
become the crux of the whole administrative 
problem of civilian relief. 

Naturally, readjustment on the new basis 
took time, and designated shipments were 
honored as such until an agreement could be 



The Plan: Organization 47 

reached. But it was the feeling of the Amer- 
ican Red Cross that the ideal to be aimed at 
was the absorption rather than the affiliation 
of American relief agencies. They had as a 
guide in this policy, the centralized organiza- 
tion of our Belgian Relief Commission, which 
had worked on the German side of the lines 
in the identical territory into which the Red 
Cross was to enter. They had in mind the pool- 
ing of all resources, as was done in the United 
States itself. They had found the French 
ceuvres (societies), excellent in themselves, 
working in detachment, the one from the other. 
"Our French Red Cross itself is represented 
by three organizations which have been asso- 
ciated in a common committee only since the 
beginning of the war,"* wrote M. Firmin 
Roz in comparing it with the American Red 
Cross. What better service could the De- 
partment of Civilian Relief give to French 
societies having the same aim as itself than a 
working example of centralized organization? 

* In La Revue Hebdomadaire. 



48 Helping France 

All American relief agencies for civilians were, 
therefore, invited to confer informally, with 
the tentative idea of becoming integral parts 
of the American Red Cross. 

This plan did not meet with success. It was 
perhaps undesirable that it should have done 
so. The other societies had their chapters, 
their clubs, their clientele at home, their 
affiliations with the French Government 
abroad. Their founders had been pioneers 
during our neutrality, giving, many of them, 
of their private resources, as an expression of 
their passionate attachment to the cause of 
France. Most of their leaders were women of 
influence and of initiative. Otherwise, in the 
midst of the difficulties which confronted 
them, their organizations would never have 
been born. They had succeeded, and by 
their success held what the American Red 
Cross had yet to win, the confidence of the 
French Government. They felt, with justice, 
that they had much to offer the Red Cross in 
the way of resources and of experience. 



The Plan: Organization 49 

All this they did offer, but they were unwilling 
to give up their identity. 

A compromise was therefore effected. 
In the field of civilian relief, for instance, one 
society, that of the American Friends — a very 
large group — became a department under the 
Red Cross, but without losing its name. An- 
other, the Smith College Relief Unit, retained 
both its name and its independent financial 
support, but worked as a direct agent of the 
Red Cross. A third, the Secours Anglo- 
Americain at Amiens, lost both its name and 
its outside support, its personnel becoming 
Red Cross workers. Others, such as the 
American Fund for French Wounded, and 
later the American Committee for Devastated 
France, were loosely affiliated, retaining their 
complete independence, receiving a monthly 
stipend, cooperating in transportation, sup- 
plies and personnel. With two societies, the 
American Fund for French Wounded and 
the Friends, the Red Cross made special ar- 
rangements as to designated shipments. 



50 Helping France 

In general, however, the policy of the Amer- 
ican Red Cross crystallized into that of cooper- 
ation with existing societies, whether Amer- 
ican, French, Canadian or British. But, as 
to the two latter, it is only fair to state that 
the relations of the American Red Cross with 
them are best described as neighborly, both 
parties, with scrupulous Anglo-Saxon inde- 
pendence, returning all favors received. To- 
ward all other agencies, in the words of one of 
the organizers of relief in the devastated 
area, the Red Cross became, not an oeuvre 
itself, but the "Mother of (Euvres." "We 
have looked," he writes, "on the liberated 
regions of France as an experimental field 
in which to create a personnel and a pro- 
gramme for the larger piece of work, when all 
of the north of France is disengaged. To 
this end we have used, as our agents, all pos- 
sible existing relief organizations already in 
the field. We have endeavored to federate 
these organizations in order to deal with them 
more simply, and to plan for the more im- 



The Plan: Organization 51 

portant demands which will come to us from 
them." 

In brief, the policy of the American Red 
Cross in France has been subordination, coor- 
dination, cooperation; subordination to the 
French Government, the French and allied 
armies, subordination always to the needs of 
our own army; coordination and cooperation 
with all existing agencies, — a policy by no 
means easy to attain. 




Bridge at Tours. 

inflexions et Croquis sur V Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wybo. 
Hachette et Cie., Paris. 

CHAPTER, V 



the plan: administration 

HAVING determined its broad lines of 
policy, the American Red Cross created 
the administrative machinery to carry them 
out. Its main office was located in Paris, the 
center of government, and of every consider- 
able agency of relief. At its head stood the 
Commissioner for France. Under him, mil- 
itary and civilian affairs were sharply divided 
into two departments. The administrator of 
the latter was styled the Director of Civilian 

52 



The Plan: Administration 53 

Relief. So far as the liberated regions were 
concerned, this department was further sub- 
divided into three bureaus: The Children's 
Bureau, occupied primarily with matters of 
public health as affecting the future citizens 
of France; the Bureau of Reconstruction, 
dealing with the repair of damaged houses 
and architectural planning, and the Bureau 
of Relief and Economic Rehabilitation. 

Fortunately for the work of the Depart- 
ment, there were available for its personnel 
at this time a number of former delegates of 
the Belgian Relief Commission, who could no 
longer work in Belgium and France owing to 
our having become belligerents in the war. 
They brought to the Department not only 
valuable training in what might be called 
wholesale economic relief, but also in some 
instances first-hand acquaintance with the 
area most recently liberated in Northern 
France. The plan of relief adopted was 
largely influenced by them, being a modifica- 
tion of that previously worked out by this 



54 Helping France 

Commission. It consisted of the controlling 
office in Paris, quickly amalgamated into the 
Bureau of Rehabilitation and Relief, and field 
delegates sent out from it to definitely assigned 
areas. To make the plan of operation clear, 
it will be better to consider this method as 
operative from September 1, 1917, to March 
21, 1918. On this latter date occurred the 
last German offensive which swept again into 
chaos the "region libe'ree." 

It was evident that material relief was the 
thing to be sent first into that stricken coun- 
try. There was need of tons of clothing, of 
shoes, of furniture, particularly beds and bed- 
ding, of household utensils, agricultural im- 
plements, stoves, soap and food. Free trans- 
portation by rail had been accorded. It re- 
mained to divide the four invaded depart- 
ments (the Oise, the Aisne, the Somme and 
the Pas-de-Calais) into districts centering 
about warehouses which should distribute 
these supplies. Haste was important; sum- 
mer was turning into autumn, autumn into 




The Son of a Soldier, Paris. 



The Plan: Administration 55 

winter — such a winter as the invaded terri- 
tories had never seen. For it must be borne 
in mind that even under the German occupa- 
tion, there had remained to the unfortunate 
inhabitants their homes, their furniture, their 
farms. Whereas the autumn of 1917 found 
them free and reunited to their country, on 
the other hand, scarcely a family had escaped 
its quota of members sent into slavery, and 
only a small proportion retained their roofs 
above their heads. 

With the kindly cooperation of presets, 
mayors and army officers, the sites of the 
warehouses in the north were chosen and 
buildings secured at Amiens, Ham, Nesle 
(Somme), Noyon (Oise) and Soissons (Aisne). 
The latter, the nearest point from the great 
central warehouse at Paris, was distant sixty- 
five miles; Amiens, eighty-one miles away, 
was the farthest north, but Ham was thirty- 
six miles from Amiens, through which owing 
to the St. Quentin salient, all freight to it had 
to be shipped. Naturally these sites were 



56 Helping France 

selected for two reasons; their accessibility, 
and their importance to the districts to be 
served by them. The capacity of these ware- 
houses gives some idea of the amount of 
freight handled: Amiens (undestroyed) forty 
carloads, Ham, five carloads, Nesle, five car- 
loads, Noyon, twelve carloads, and Sois- 
sons, three carloads. But the speed of opera- 
tion varied in these warehouses with the dif- 
ficulties of rail and motor transport. Mili- 
tary maneuvers always took precedence over 
civilian freight, even to the extent of tem- 
porary shortage in civilian food. Despite the 
danger from bombing, and the always pos- 
sible German advance, the accumulation of 
supplies in the warehouses, therefore, seemed 
advisable. The value of the goods so stored 
against emergencies in March, 1918, is inter- 
esting in this connection: Amiens, Fr. 300,000; 
Ham, 197,568.10; Nesle, 137,000; Noyon, 
208,834, and Soissons, 334,947.94. 

Yet the warehouses emptied themselves 
with astonishing rapidity. Attached to each 



The Plan: Administration 57 

was a head warehouse man and a transport 
service of from one to five trucks, with drivers, 
and a passenger Ford. Under the Red Cross 
direction worked a force of men usually as- 
signed by the French Army for unloading and 
reloading goods. The value of this transport 
service alone in a zone where there were prac- 
tically no private conveyances, where every 
automobile had to be militarized, and where 
gasoline could be obtained only on an army 
order and then at a cost of six francs a litre, 
can hardly be overestimated. Next to the 
relief supplies themselves, transportation was 
the most essential service rendered by the 
Red Cross in the regions devastees. 

Yet the duties of the four delegates to whom 
the warehouses and their staffs were assigned 
comprised much more than the mere distri- 
bution of relief. The instructions from the 
central office to the delegate were as follows: 

1. To reside in his district. 

2. To establish friendly relations with all 
officials, civil and military, in his district. 



58 Helping France 

3. To study and report upon means of com- 
munication and transportation. 

4. To study and report upon: 

(a) The amount of destruction caused by 
the war. 

(6) The number of civilians who are back 
and the rapidity with which they are return- 
ing. 

(c) The condition of those who are back and 
how they live and what they do. 

(d) Organization and range of all relief 
machinery in the field, including that of the 
government. 

5. To establish friendly relations with other 
organizations and through them aid the civil 
population in such ways as seem desirable 
and feasible. 

6. To have general oversight of the ware- 
house in his district and cooperate with the 
warehouse department. 

In other words, as the head of the Bureau 
wrote six months later: "From the start we 
have tried to impress upon the ceuvres the 



The Plan: Administration 59 

American Red Cross point-of-view that our 
effort is not intended as simple charity, but 
as a direct contribution to the rehabilitation 
of the invaded departments of France; that 
we do not intend to assume any part of the 
normal burden of poor relief in these depart- 
ments; that our help is intended to set war- 
sufferers on their feet and to make them self- 
respecting, independent and productive cit- 
izens; that it is important for the future 
as well as for the present that beneficiaries of 
American Red Cross aid should know that it 
is America which is helping them — the same 
America which is their militant Ally." 

It will be seen that a delegate was, in his 
way, an ambassador from America to his 
province, and in need of special qualifications 
of tact, of sympathy, of decision. It is the 
delegates, not only in the devastated area, but 
in any department, who have made the living 
history of the civilian relief of the American 
Red Cross in France. 




Public Fountain at Noyon. 



Reflexions et Croquis sur V Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wybo. 
Hachette et Cie., Paris. 



CHAPTER VI 



the plan: cooperation 

THE first delegate to reach his field was, 
naturally, the delegate assigned to the 
district most accessible, that radiating from 
Noyon, in the Oise. He established himself 
there in the first week of September, 1917. 
There were already many agencies which had 
preceded him, since this area had been rapidly 
cleared in March, and was well behind the 
lines. These agencies were those of the Third 

60 



The Plan: Cooperation 61 

French Army, those of the Government, rep- 
resented by the Ministry of the Interior, the 
Ministry of Agriculture and the Prefecture 
of the Department, and private societies. 
Of these latter, one was American and six 
were French. Between the private societies 
and the Government, however, there were 
connecting links, through the Comite du 
Secours National, attached to the Ministry 
of the Interior, which federalized and sub- 
sidized French activities of relief, both public 
and private; and, more directly, for all so- 
cieties, through a special sous-prefet repre- 
senting the Ministry, and appointed as liaison 
officer in each department of the invaded 
territory between the French Army, the 
relief organizations and the Government. 
After all, it was the Army, reaching up 
through the Ministry of War, which governed 
this territory by martial law, and it was the 
Army which assigned to each agency its sec- 
tor of relief. At the head of this civilian 
service for the Third Army was Captain Pal- 



62 Helping France 

lain, stationed at Noyon. It will be seen 
that the stage was well set for the operation of 
Red Cross policy. 

In a book of this scope, it would be both 
impossible and inappropriate to enter upon a 
description of the intricate yet fascinating 
schemes of relief worked out between the 
various departments of the French Govern- 
ment, the various corps of the French Army, 
the various prefectures, and the ceuvres, in 
the devastated area. Yet it would be equally 
impossible to understand the course of the 
American Red Cross in any given district 
without some grasp of the main principles 
which underlay all the variations, and de- 
fined the limits within which it was free to 
operate. It is only fair to state that the 
French, masterly in their strategy of war, 
have been equally masterly in their concep- 
tion of organized relief. And if we, in our 
American impatience, have sometimes chafed 
at the "red tape" of this organization, it 
is perhaps only because, drained of their 



The Plan: Cooperation 63 

resources by the demands of military cam- 
paigns, whose thunders often shook the fields 
reclaimed, the French Army and the French 
Government were unable to carry out their 
ideals. Four years of stupendous warfare 
had tested not only the methods, but the spir- 
itual and material capital of the French 
nation. The greatest struggle, as all the 
world knows now, was yet to be made, in the 
campaigns of 1918. If, therefore, the Amer- 
ican Red Cross has made a contribution of 
value to France in this struggle, it is not so 
much in the domain of organization as it is 
in that of resources, both of personnel and of 
supplies, which enabled existing organizations 
to perform their work. 

The practical scheme of reconstruction put 
in operation by the Third French Army was 
in accordance with the principles laid down 
by General Lyautey for a friendly army of 
occupation in a ravaged territory. It was 
placed in charge of a man of large affairs, Cap- 
tain Pallain being the son of the President of 



64 Helping France 

the Bank of France. It comprised (1) food 
supply, (2) actual rebuilding, (3) plowing, 
seeding, and supplying of farm animals, (4) 
sanitation. In short, while in the midst of 
an active campaign, it set itself to repair what 
the Germans had destroyed. 

Put in another way, it supplied transport, 
labor, and the functions of local government. 
Sectors containing each an engineer, a phy- 
sician, and an agricultural expert were given 
charge of stated areas. Labor was supplied 
immediately back of the lines by soldiers en 
repos, by Moroccans or Annamites whose red 
turbans or conical hats lent a curious oriental 
color to the dun landscape, or, further back, 
by hundreds of German prisoners. By au- 
tumn, in the region of Noyon, twelve hundred 
hectares or three thousand acres, had been 
plowed and planted. In all, in the region 
occupied by the Third Army, four thousand 
five hundred houses were repaired and five 
hundred built. 

The same care of civilians was taken on the 



The Plan: Cooperation 65 

British side of the lines. It was a military- 
necessity, an offset to the war which Germany 
made upon civilians. The German Army had 
had its sectors also, of destruction and not of 
construction. To them were attached skilled 
mechanics who knew the essential parts of 
agricultural machinery, and removed the 
same part from each machine in their line 
of retreat. There were expert foresters who 
calculated to a nicety the girdling of fruit 
trees. There were chemists, who gauged the 
charges of explosives, and poisoned the wells. 
The field of this economic combat of nations 
was the richest of wheat lands, — and food 
would win the war. It followed that the 
allied armies of occupation must organize 
their civilian sectors for salvage in this new 
form of war. 

But as the allied armies advanced their 
trenches, the land behind them became safer 
for civilians. The departmental government 
and the Ministry of the Interior took over 
more and more of its duties from the Army. 



66 Helping France 

For example, a daily stipend was allotted by 
the Government to any family which had suf- 
fered loss of property or of wage earners. 
This was calculated to cover the bare cost of 
food, which was distributed by the depart- 
mental machinery. Depots were established 
of the most essential articles of furniture, 
which were given out through the mayors of 
communes. Each allotment bore a stated 
value, and this was to be deducted from a 
post-war settlement of damages to be paid by 
the Government. Cooperative grocery stores 
were also established, and, under the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, associations of farmers 
who clubbed together to avail themselves of 
government tractors and government labor in 
the plowing of their land. Most important 
of all, the Government made, \ \ transported 
and allocated temporary shacks for the housing 
of the civilian population, the labor for the 
putting up of which was furnished largely by 
the Army. In all of this period of transition 
from military to civil government, the special 



The Plan: Cooperation 67 

sous-pre*fet already mentioned was the con- 
necting link between them. 

One might question the need of private 
relief in a field so carefully covered by gov- 
ernment agencies, were it not that the Gov- 
ernment welcomed and made a place for them 
in its staggering task. It was not the Gov- 
ernment, but the Chamber of Commerce of 
Dunkerque which stored there in anticipa- 
tion of the allied advance, the first supplies 
of food rushed to the civilians of the liberated 
regions. In the eastern zone, it was the 
Secours d'Urgence that performed a like ser- 
vice. Warerooms were assigned to various 
societies in Paris, and a transport service 
placed at their disposal by the Army. The 
very names of the French ceuvres are indic- 
ative of the emergency which created them 
and of the hold they have on the sympathy 
of the public which supports them. There 
are, for instance, the Abri (Shelter), the Bon 
Gite (Good Lodging), the Armoire Lorraine 
(Wardrobe of Lorraine), the Renaissance des 



68 Helping France 

Foyers (the Rebirth of the Homes), the 
Village Reconstitue (the Village Rebuilt), the 
Aisne Devastee (the Devastated Aisne), the 
Secours d'Urgence (Emergency Relief). At 
the head of them all, in point of age and of 
prestige, are the Secours aux Blesses Mili- 
taires, the Union des Femmes de France and 
the Association des Dames de France, the 
three societies which make up the French 
Red Cross. All loosely federated under a 
liaison officer between the Ministry of War 
and the Ministry of the Interior, it remained 
for these societies to work out their individual 
cooperation in accordance with the kind of 
help with which the one could supplement the 
other. 

Take, for instance, the history of one of the 
French societies represented in the district 
assigned to the Red Cross delegate in the 
Oise, that known as the Comite" de Babceuf. 
The village of Babceuf was destroyed by the 
Germans, and with it, the Chateau belonging 
to its chief councilor. His wife had a friend 




Ruins of Contalmaison, Somme. 



The Plan: Cooperation 69 

in Paris, a member of the Secours aux Blesses 
Militaires of the French Red Cross. She 
interested her in Baboeuf. This was the be- 
ginning of the small ceuvre which was later 
taken under the patronage of the Secours aux 
Blesses Militaires. Its plan of operation was 
simple. The first report reads : " Some nurses 
of the S. S. B. M. came to Babceuf in May, 
1917, to be the bond of union between the soci- 
eties of mercy at a distance and the unfor- 
tunate populations" In the beginning, lacking 
means of transport, the establishment at 
Baboeuf could act only in a very limited 
sector. Colonel Barry, of the British Red 
Cross, then placed at their disposal a small 
truck and a driver. From this beginning, 
their dependent villages grew. Their fur- 
niture was donated to them for distribution 
by the Bon Gite from its central reservoir in 
Paris. Twelve other societies, representing 
five nationalities and three religious faiths — 
Protestant, Hebrew and Catholic — cooper- 
ated with them, some giving clothing, others 



70 Helping France 

cloth, and others farm animals. Last, but 
not least, the Comite hired a gang of work- 
men and, with the help of the Army, repaired 
its villages. 

With such a spirit of cooperation already 
abroad, it was easy for the delegate of the 
American Red Cross to make himself wel- 
come. He represented, in their eyes, one 
more cooperating agency. But there was 
this difference between the American Red 
Cross and all other societies in the field. It 
was its purpose to cooperate impartially with 
all. Not only so, but in an unofficial capacity 
to influence the methods employed in the 
giving of relief, by selecting the agencies which 
should be the distributors of its supplies. In 
every case, the watchword was passed on from 
headquarters to avoid giving as a charity, to 
remember that the ultimate consumer was a 
self-respecting citizen, rendered temporarily 
helpless, but only temporarily, by the mis- 
fortunes of war. Even though the inhabi- 
tants left in the invaded regions were, for the 



The Plan: Cooperation 71 

most part, women, old people and children, 
they came of a hardy race inured to toil, ac- 
customed for hundreds of years to the wastage 
of contending armies. In nearly every case 
they had rescued their savings, those peasant 
savings which, as all the world knows, are the 
"long stocking" of the wealth of France. 

The economic effort of the French Govern- 
ment was in accord with this Red Cross policy 
of helping the unfortunates to help them- 
selves. And in the devastated regions the 
delegates of the Red Cross had also a valuable 
precedent in their favor. The Belgian Relief 
Commission, operating in the same territory 
behind the German lines, had made it a rule 
to sell for a nominal sum rather than to give 
outright. The smallest peasant understood 
and approved a plan which saved him from 
humiliation. It was recognized as the Amer- 
ican way. 




Municipal Offices at Urrugne. 



Reflexions et Croquis sur V Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wybo. 
Hachette et Cie., Paris. 



CHAPTER VII 



COOPERATION IN PRACTICE 

COOPERATION is a large word on paper, 
and looms larger in practice. Applied to 
the district manned by the American Red 
Cross delegate, it represented over 2000 
square miles of territory and approximately 
150,000 souls. The means at his command 
were (1) a warehouse, yet to be chosen and 
stocked, (2) a Ford passenger car, and later, 
a camionette, (3) a warehouse man, and later, 

72 



Cooperation in Practice 73 

together with the camionette, a secretary, and 
a chauffeur. Noyon, his base of operations, 
was at the time of his advent, and up to 
the time of the armistice, the railhead on the 
main line from Paris to St. Quentin. Fifteen 
miles back, at Compiegne, were the grand 
headquarters of the French Army; from fifteen 
to twenty-five miles away in a sweeping semi- 
circle to the north and to the east extended 
the front line. Noyon figured in the plan of 
Germany as the gate on the direct road to 
Paris; conversely, it was to the French their 
gateway for troops, supplies and ammunition 
going up into the Somme. Camions in hun- 
dreds and thousands, cavalry, batteries of 
seventy-fives, steady marching infantry, blue 
devils, convoys of donkeys used to carry am- 
munition under fire, flocks of sheep, the 
whizzing cars of officers, — all passed like a 
pageant through Noyon. Nor were the sounds 
of combat absent. German aeroplanes, well 
aware of the activities centering in their former 
stronghold, visited it nearly every day. Bombs 



74 Helping France 

were dropped, trains were wrecked, and the 
bullets of air battles, taking place almost out 
of sight in the blue sky above, came dropping 
down in the city streets. 

Naturally, civilian affairs took secondary 
place in the matter of transport. Yet the 
army in the midst of its campaign set aside an 
efficient camion service from Noyon to carry 
civilian supplies. In this way, Noyon was the 
center of civilian as well as of military activity 
for the neighborhood, and all the relief agen- 
cies radiated from it. These latter dotted 
the ruined countryside at irregular intervals, 
from Golancourt in the Somme, to Senlis, the 
southernmost point of German devastations 
in the Oise, taking in, on the east, a section 
only five miles from the front line trenches at 
Villequier-Aumont, in the Aisne. At Golan- 
court was located a Friends' Unit, composed 
of both British and American workers; at 
Guiscard, a distributing station of the Renais- 
sance des Foyers, at Babceuf, twelve miles 
west of Noyon, the Comite* already men- 



Cooperation in Practice 75 

tioned, at Ribecourt, Lassigny and Noyon 
itself advance posts of the Village Recon- 
stititue*, at Chiry-Ourscamp the nurses of the 
Villages Liber6s, and at Villequier-Aumont, 
nearest of all to the lines, an American 
women's unit, the Philadelphia Committee of 
the Pennsylvania Emergency Aid. All, it will 
be noted, had located their main posts of 
relief in the villages. All were bending their 
energies to the revival of agriculture in this, 
the richest agricultural area of France. The 
colony at Golancourt, twelve strong, was 
engaged in actual plowing, planting and re- 
stocking of farms; the Philadelphia Com- 
mittee with a personnel averaging the same 
number, charged itself with the rehabilita- 
tion and reconstruction of five villages, in- 
cluding the building, equipping and teaching 
of two schools; the French societies with a 
smaller personnel and practically no trans- 
portation, worked a larger area, giving rather 
emergent relief. 

This personnel consisted of visiting nurses, 



76 Helping France 

settled, two by two, in their districts. In 
addition, the Villages Liberes had a phy- 
sician. Yet this does not convey to an Amer- 
ican an exact idea of the type of work accom- 
plished. In the first place, France has no 
trained nurses, in the same sense that we have 
in America. Most of the nurses, whether 
belonging to the Secours aux Blesses Mil- 
itaires, to the Femmes de France, or to the 
Dames de France, are ladies of social stand- 
ing, of intelligence and of unselfish devotion, 
who volunteer in this service. Their role in 
the devastated area would correspond more to 
that of Sisters of Charity with us. As in the 
case of the Baboeuf Comite, they were pri- 
marily distributing agents of societies at a 
distance. Their barracks contained besides 
dispensaries, dormitories for the shelterless 
returning refugees. They were oases of moral 
and social inspiration in their communities. 
These societies naturally became the largest 
distributors of American Red Cross supplies. 
Take, for instance, the post at Lassigny. 



Cooperation in Practice 77 

For two years and a half, Lassigny, situated 
on the heights above Noyon, had been swept 
by the cross fire of two opposing armies. The 
gently-rounded slopes about it, originally cov- 
ered with copses, lie denuded, scarred with 
intricate, deep-gashed trenches, bristled by 
occasional trees, skeletons of the once lovely 
woods, from which even the bark is stripped 
bare. In Lassigny, so total had been the 
destruction of its houses that in May 1917 
only two of its nine hundred inhabitants were 
back. Yet the poor remnant of its popula- 
tion continued to increase, existing in cellars, 
until by December one hundred and seventy 
had returned. Barracks, given by the Gov- 
ernment, were erected by the Army. Con- 
spicuous among them was the blue-painted 
headquarters of the Village Reconstitue\ set 
at the crossroad. Here two courageous nurses 
of the Union des Femmes de France distrib- 
uted the succor provided by their subsidizing 
agencies. Two cows furnished milk, which 
was given to undernourished children; a 



78 Helping France 

vegetable garden was planted, hens and rab- 
bits for the restocking of farms were raised. 
With the help of one sewing machine, the 
revival of industry began. A workroom for 
all the women within walking distance of 
Lassigny was established. 

The opening of workrooms was one of the 
functions of the French societies, notably of 
the Femmes de France, most helpful to the 
morale of the devastated areas. No one was 
quicker than the French themselves to see 
the danger of pauperizing the unfortunate 
peasants. A regular scale of wages was 
arranged. Or, did the worker desire, she 
could have the finished products, up to the 
estimated value of her work. Before the 
advent of the American Red Cross at Noyon, 
the Baron Rothschild had supplied both the 
material and the market for these wares. His 
was, in fact, a very interesting experiment in 
social economics. He supplied material at 
cost, bought at a fixed price, and sold again at 
a commercial rate in Paris, the garments made. 



Cooperation in Practice 79 

In addition, he had established a store, in 
the old archiepiscopal palace at Noyon, where 
one could buy household necessities at cost 
also, and a depot for the setting up of chains of 
grocery stores. His idea was, not profit, but a 
business which should support itself and at 
the same time render an invaluable service to 
a community absolutely without stores or 
markets or merchandise. 

The American Red Cross was able to aug- 
ment quickly the amount of material fur- 
nished to the workrooms thus established, and 
to do it without cost. It came at a time when 
the Baron's experiment was drawing to a 
close, owing to the resumption of normal trade. 
In place of one sewing machine, it gave as 
many as were needed. The circle at Lassigny 
grew under this stimulus from twenty mem- 
bers to seventy-five. Perhaps with the idea 
of lessening gossip and bickering, a phono- 
graph was supplied. But, most important of 
all, the American Red Cross was able to give 
back to Lassigny its wells. Not only were the 



8o Helping France 

waters of Lassigny rendered undrinkable, as 
were all the wells of the devastated area, by 
the shoveling in of filth; they were filled to 
the top and grassed over. One could only 
guess where the wells had been. German 
prisoners dug out the wells in time, and the 
water was analyzed by army chemists and 
pronounced fit to drink. But there were no 
pumps in Lassigny until the Red Cross bought 
them in Paris, transported them, and set them 
up. 

Naturally, the Red Cross delegate was the 
recipient of many requests for aid. All the 
Red Cross asked was to be of service. Hence, 
not long after the arrival of the delegate, the 
sous-prefet stationed at Noyon suggested 
that a small portable sawmill would be of the 
greatest help in furthering the repair of 
houses, so essential to the return of the popu- 
lation. Along the highways which, every- 
where in France, are arched with stately trees, 
the Germans had left behind them thousands 
of felled trunks. Nor, it is interesting to note, 



Cooperation in Practice 81 

were most of these felled across the road to 
serve as barricades. Like lines of soldiers 
mowed down by opposing barrages they lie, 
mile after mile, their hacked bases to the road- 
side, their once green tops to the fields. The 
American Red Cross installed a circular steam 
saw to cut these trees; the American Friends* 
Unit furnished the man to run it, and the 
lumber went to make the barracks for the vil- 
lage of Tracy-le-Mont. 

j The civilian authorities as rapidly as pos- 
sible took over more and more of the admin- 
istration of the Oise from the army. Their 
programme of relief centered in an agricultural 
association of the farmers into groups known 
as cooperatives. The purpose was to band 
together a sufficient number of the small 
farmers who abound in this region to allow of 
the plowing of the land by tractor or by teams 
of horses and plows owned or rented in com- 
mon. The difficulty of inducing the peasant 
farmers to enter into any such arrangement 
was great. Each had been brought up for 



82 Helping France 

generations to be tenacious of his own, to be 
independent of his fellows. And now, at a 
time when landmarks were destroyed, and 
the very title to his property in all probability 
lost, he was asked to level what was left of 
his boundaries, to entrust a tithe of his 
hardly saved money to the keeping of others. 
At a critical moment, the American Red Cross 
was able to present thirty -five of these cooper- 
atives with a plow apiece as tangible evidence 
of some advantage to be derived from the 
scheme. At Golancourt, again, the plow was 
in the hands of the cooperative, the horses 
of the Friends' Unit were ready to plow, but 
there was lack of oats. It was not only that 
oats were lacking; it was strictly forbidden 
to use them for fodder, as the Government was 
hoarding them for planting. But the Red 
Cross was able to supply oats. 

School furniture and subsidies to replace 
school equipment were another form of Red 
Cross aid. For the Germans, in all the coun- 
try artificially destroyed by them, wreaked 



Cooperation in Practice 83 

a special spite upon churches, town halls 
and schools. 

Interesting as were the indirect methods of 
aid consistently adhered to by the American 
Red Cross in the Qise, it is, after all, in direct 
contact that human interest always lies. The 
appeals made to the Red Cross delegate were 
turned over by him to the proper source of 
help. But in passing through his hands, 
they left him with a knowledge that he was 
fulfilling in his way a duty very dear to the 
hearts of the French. An adjutant in a 
French Army Corps writes him: "I have the 
honor to call to your benevolent attention the 
situation of the family living at C — in the 
canton of Lassigny. During a tour of the 
front in the region most recently liberated, I 
was able to substantiate the following facts: 
The village, counting about five hundred 
hearths is, so to speak, entirely demolished, 
the few habitations still standing are open to 
the winds, the roofs, in spite of the hasty 
repairs made by the Army, let in water every- 



84 Helping France 

where. Mme. X — lives alone with one 
little girl of five, and a boy of thirteen. She is 
seriously wounded and perhaps in agony. 
Her husband was deported as a civilian host- 
age into Germany. Her oldest son, married 
and father of a family, has been at the front 
since the beginning; her second son is a pris- 
oner in Germany and the third is at the point 
of death, terribly burned by the explosion of a 
shell lying in the line of march. Mme. X — 
is without a single resource, the Germans 
having taken everything away; work tools, 
garden tools, mattresses, linen, and every 
object of value. 

"During the German occupation, Mme. 
X — having some medical knowledge, suc- 
ceeded, by a combination of tact and devo- 
tion, in nursing and in assisting all the wounded 
prisoners cared for in the district. She saved 
at the risk of her life and that of her infants, 
the big bronze bell of the church presented 
by the Emperor Napoleon. ] 

"Thinking that this woman, more than 



Cooperation in Practice 85 

being necessitous, was above all a heroine, 1 
have believed it well, and have allowed my- 
self, to call her to your kind attention." 

A second letter comes from a lieutenant in 
the French Army, presenting the case of 
another family entirely unknown to him. 
But in his company is a soldier, who has been 
taken in and given shelter during his repos 
by a grandmother and her granddaughter 
somewhere in the Oise. They have treated 
him like one of the family. Now, as he is 
about to leave for the front, the grandmother 
has been taken ill; the granddaughter is young 
and not strong. He has already written to a 
married daughter at a distance. The daughter, 
whose husband is ill in bed, writes in turn to 
her brother, thinking that some arrangement 
can be made for her to go to their mother. 
But in vain. So, all these letters, carefully 
annotated, the lieutenant encloses with his 
own, asking the American Red Cross to help. 

Not only was it the destitute peasants, but 
the unfortunates of another class that the 



86 Helping France 

American Red Cross was privileged to assist. 
I refer especially to the heroic chatelaines of 
ruined chateaux. A book might be written 
on them in the relief work of France. Like 
the president of the Villages Lib6re*s, from 
whom I have before quoted, many considered 
themselves by their very misfortunes elected 
to assist their more needy neighbors. In 
France, there are class distinctions, handed 
down from feudalism, which we in America 
do not know. The Parisian lady, of ever so 
charitable intentions, is as much at sea as an 
American in dealing with the Picard peasants. 
"Superstitious, stingy, independent, reserved, 
yet when they have once given their confi- 
dence, absolutely loyal, and brave beyond 
anything I have even imagined," — this is the 
characterization of them given by an American 
worker among these peasants of France. Two 
ladies in the Oise rendered invaluable service 
by staying on their ruined estates and inter- 
preting the needs of their dependents. One 
is Mme. Menget of the Babceuf Committee, 




A Street in Guiscard. 




The Chdteau, Ham. 

Apres le Recul Allemand, Mars 1917. Noyon, Guiscard, Ham: Armand 
Gueritte. Vernant <& Dolle, Imprimeurs, Paris. 



Cooperation in Practice 87 

and the other the Comtesse d'Evry of Namp- 
cel. The story of the latter epitomizes the 
sort of help that the Red Cross has given in 
the Oise. 

The Comtesse d'Evry had, before the war, 
a chateau on a cliff overlooking the hamlet 
of Nampcel which clustered about its little 
church in a narrow gorge. Four farms in 
the commune belonged to her. She had be- 
sides, two other estates, one further south in 
the Oise, and another in Normandy. The 
counts of Evry have long been established at 
Nampcel. Besides the rich farmlands, there 
had been extensive quarries there. The houses, 
like most in this region, were solidly built of 
stone. The first flying wedge of the Germans 
overwhelmed and destroyed the hamlet. The 
inhabitants fled, the Comtesse herself among 
them, with her little boy. The caretakers of 
the chateau, however, refused to leave. But 
their devotion was futile; the chateau was 
looted, soaked in kerosene and burned. 

The spring of 1917, however, found the Com- 



88 Helping France 

tesse back in her ruined village. Like her 
neighbors, she was homeless, but undaunted. 
She fitted up a caravan and set it, not on the 
isolated height, but down in the valley, among 
her villagers. As they returned, she cared for 
them and gave them employment on her 
farms. Her days were full, her villagers 
happy until in March, 1918, came the second 
catastrophe. The Germans returned, but the 
Comtesse was prepared. She had farm wagons 
and horses. These she divided among her 
people. On each she placed a store of pro- 
visions to last several days, — and that store 
of provisions came from the American Red 
Cross. Last of all she loaded the cart which 
was to take her boy, a lad of twelve. She 
put him in charge of her overseer and his wife, 
and started the whole slow procession off to 
her estate in Normandy. It lends a bright 
color to the picture of universal desolation to 
know that here, as elsewhere, the children 
regarded the exodus as a glorious adventure. 
Such are the contrasts of war. 



Cooperation In Practice 89 

Mme. d'Evry herself did not go to Nor- 
mandy. In the midst of her second flight 
from Nampcel, she was already laying plans 
for her return. She had it in mind to plant 
potatoes on the lawn of her estate to the south, 
so as to have them ready for winter use. To 
this estate, therefore, she retired, and there 
she was able to give a temporary shelter to 
the personnel of the American Red Cross, 
when they were at last driven south from Com- 
piegne. Strawberries, sugar and cream I 
have heard awaited them, — an unbelievable 
contrast to days of evacuating and feeding 
refugees, and nights of continuous bombing. 

The Comtesse d'Evry's potato crop was 
planted, and dug, and stored away. But 
none too soon. By the autumn of 1918, she 
again went back to Nampcel. The heights 
about that village have been swept as by a 
cyclone. One locates neighboring villages 
by gaunt sign posts alone. Not a tree is 
standing. The road runs naked along the 
level clay ridges, except where a stretch of 



90 Helping France 

battered camouflage flaps in the wind. In the 
valley beneath are jagged walls and German 
dugouts, and not a living soul. But the 
Comtesse can be found, housed in a quarry 
which served later as a stable for one of her 
great farms. She is planning another exodus 
for her villagers, this time from Normandy to 
Nampcel. And the American Red Cross, 
itself back in Compiegne, is helping to make 
this possible. 




Onvillera Church (Santerre) 



inflexions et Croquis sur V Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wybo. 
Hachette et Cie., Paris. 



CHAPTER VIII 



DIRECT INTERVENTION 

THE problems of the Somme were more 
complex than those of the Oise. In the 
first place, its liberated territory was divided 
between two armies of occupation; the west- 
ern lines being held by the British, and the 
eastern lines by the French. It was naturally 
divided also into two broad economic sections, 
corresponding roughly to the two areas occu- 
pied by them; the manufacturing cities and 

91 



92 Helping France 

dependencies of the north, and the plain of the 
Santerre, par excellence, the granary of France. 
In the autumn of 1917, the latter had been 
devastated, the former had not. Two dele- 
gates were therefore assigned to the Somme, 
one located in Amiens, the capital of the de- 
partment, and the other at Ham, the one 
having charge of the undevastated, and the 
other of the devastated area. In both places 
were worked out some of the variations to the 
Belgian scheme of relief which had been so 
closely adhered to in the Oise. 

These hinged on the direct employment of 
American Red Cross personnel. In the ter- 
ritory controlled from Ham four experiments 
of this type were started: (1) Actual repair 
work by a Red Cross reconstruction unit in 
five villages near Nesle, (2) Reconstruction 
and rehabilitation by Friends' Units at Gruny 
and Ham, to which in point of accessibility 
rather than to the Oise, belonged also the 
agricultural group at Golancourt, (3) Rehabil- 
itation by a woman's college unit, that of 



Direct Intervention 93 

Smith College, in the villages centering about 
Grecourt, and (4) A civilian hospital in charge 
of an American Red Cross doctor at Nesle. 
In the Somme, then, came into play the three 
main bureaus of the Department of Civilian 
Affairs, those concerned with reconstruction, 
with rehabilitation and with public health. 

Yet these experiments were considered at 
the time not so much a departure as a logical 
result of cooperation. It was after important 
conferences with the French Government and 
in the place selected by it that a modest be- 
ginning in reconstruction was made. It was 
in accordance with a far-reaching agreement 
with the Friends that they entered the field 
under Red Cross auspices; it was in an effort 
to use the enthusiasm of the women's colleges 
of America that the policy of college units 
was approved, and it was at the actual request 
of the French Government and the agent of 
the French Red Cross there that the civilian 
hospital was established at Nesle. As a 
matter of fact, the hospital cannot be con- 



94 Helping France 

sidered a new departure, doctors, nurses and 
medicines having been from the first one of 
the most important contributions of America 
to France. The hospital at Nesle was, how- 
ever, the first civilian hospital opened by the 
American Red Cross in the devastated area. 
The revival of agriculture, primarily, was 
made the basis of French government relief. 
It was in order to produce food that the cul- 
tivator was allowed to remain on, or assisted 
by the Government to return to, his farm. 
The angle of America on this problem is well 
put in a Red Cross report already quoted 
from: "Idle land in France means an extra 
burden on tonnage from America. Idle land 
in France means more soldiers, more food- 
stuffs, more ammunition from the United 
States of America. ... At least one man in 
our organization has asked: 'How many 
ounces of bread is a brick worth?" There 
came a new slogan into Red Cross activity: 
" Housing follows the plow." 
I In that part of Picardy now designated as 



Direct Intervention 95 

the Somme, large farms, even in the American 
sense of the word, were the rule. For in- 
stance, in Croix-Molineaux, one of the vil- 
lages selected for repair, there were farms 
varying from 500 acres, 300 acres, 200 acres, 
down to twelve acres. As a rule, the farm 
buildings hereabouts cluster in villages, owing 
to two causes, first, protection — an idea dating 
from feudal times — and secondly, the high 
value of land. The structure of each manage 
reflects these two principles; economy of 
space, and security. Despite its one story of 
height, necessitated by the soft brick, or clay 
wattling of which it is made, it is compactly 
built around a central court, this court con- 
taining the most coveted possession of the 
farmer, his piles of manure. Opening di- 
rectly from the street, and usually through the 
barn, is the arched gateway, wide enough and 
high enough to receive the harvest wains. 
Not only is the barn the first, it is the largest 
building of the enclosure and serves as both 
grange and threshing floor. On either wing 



96 Helping France 

of it are built the stables, the rabbit hutches, 
the hen houses — all of brick — without which a 
farm in Picardy would not be a farm. Oppo- 
site the great gate, and forming the back wall 
of the rectangle, is the farmer's house. From 
this coign of vantage, he surveys and guards 
his domain. "When the wheat has entered, 
when the gate is closed, the house is entirely 
shut, and the street appears blind. In each 
direction extends a long line of blank, monot- 
onous walls, giving to the village an aspect 
silent and dead. One can see that every- 
thing is designed for the convenience of farm 
labor. Nothing is sacrificed to the comfort of 
the owner, for whom his house, as well as his 
field, is an implement of toil. It exemplifies a 
form of life very ancient, since in the enact- 
ments of the thirteenth century one finds the 
Picard farm described as it stands to-day. It 
is a manner of life adapted for all time to 
these fertile lands which for twenty centuries 
the plow has turned without hindrance, and 
where France, in the critical hours of her his- 



Direct Intervention 97 

tory, has been able to count on the greatest of 
her strength.' 5 * 

In villages such as this, at Croix-Molineaux, 
Matigny and "Y" the American Red Cross 
began temporary repairs, first of the houses, 
then of the barns, and finally, of the schools. 
Their lumber they drew from two sources, the 
French Government through what was famil- 
iarly called the Moroccan Camp at Nesle, and 
the Red Cross itself through its warehouse at 
Ham. Their gang of workmen they recruited 
themselves among civilians, subject, of course, 
to the limitations imposed by military service. 
On the advice of the French architect who 
made the survey and later became an asso- 
ciate head of the bureau, and in accordance 
with the policy of the French Government, 
these repairs were made against a future in- 
demnity of war. That is, each farmer whose 
roof was patched, or whose windows were 
set in, in case these repairs were of a per- 
manent nature, understood that he would 

*Paul L6on: La Renaissance des Euines. 



98 Helping France 

eventually pay for them from the sum allowed 
him by the government to cover his loss. 
Naturally, work was hampered by many ob- 
stacles; the difficulty of obtaining efficient 
labor, and the limited supply of material, par- 
ticularly lumber. The needs of the army 
came first, always; and the needs of individ- 
uals and of private contractors had equal 
claims with the Red Cross on the lumber 
turned out by the government at the Moroc- 
can camp. The taking over of the French 
lines in the Somme by the British in January, 
1918, caused other difficulties, owing to dif- 
ferent regulations in regard to civilian opera- 
tions behind the lines. Nevertheless, prog- 
ress was made, and by the end of Jan- 
uary, 1918, forty farms had been repaired, 
twenty-seven of them completely, according 
to the specifications. At this time, a force 
of thirty men was being employed. By 
March, two more villages in the neighborhood 
were in process of renovation, and one hun- 
dred houses in all had been repaired. 



Direct Intervention 99 

Near neighbors to this group of villages were 
those of the Friends, whom it will not be out 
of place to consider here as an integral part 
of the American Red Cross. At Gruny, near 
Roye, was located a company of fifteen work- 
ers, who undertook repairs of houses for four 
villages assigned them by the French Gov- 
ernment. They were allowed to take ma- 
terials from uninhabited ruins for rebuilding, 
and did a very substantial piece of work. 
Working with them was an agricultural unit 
which plowed, seeded and restocked the 
farms. At Ham, another construction unit 
of six worked up toward the St. Quentin front, 
in the Aisne, erecting demountable houses 
for the Government. These houses were 
made at their own factory in the Jura moun- 
tains. Four such houses, of two or three 
rooms, were constructed there each week, from 
lumber requisitioned for them by the Gov- 
ernment, and the finished product became the 
property of the Ministry of the Interior. This 
unit at Ham, largely augmented, went out 



ioo Helping France 

later to put up barracks for the nearby vil- 
lages in the Somme. "While engaged in this 
work, the Friends lived with the families 
among the ruins, and by their presence did 
far more service than can be measured by the 
buildings they put up. In all, they mounted 
eighty barracks. i 

As the construction unit left Ham, another 
charged with relief work took over its quarters, 
working from Ham in an assigned area com- 
prising twelve villages, and in the town itself. 

The agricultural group at Golancourt has 
already been mentioned. Like all private 
agencies who attempted this line of work, 
their aim was to assist the small holder, the 
needs of the grands cultivateurs being met by 
the Government scheme of tractor plows, 
manned by soldiers. Four hundred tractors 
were already at work behind the lines, when 
the Friends made their first survey of the 
Somme. By spring, with the aid of the 
British Army, whose agricultural programme 
was as fully developed as the French, 28,000 



Direct Intervention 101 

acres had been thus plowed in the depart- 
ment. But, naturally, wholesale plowing 
could not be done in kitchen gardens, or fields 
of small acreage. To meet the needs of these 
petty farmers, whose aggregate holdings were 
quite as important as those of the landed 
estates, the Friends had horses, plows and 
personnel. They were stocking their farms 
also with chickens and rabbits, to breed 
them for the countryside. 

The work of the Friends' agricultural and 
constructive centers dovetailed with that of 
the Smith College Relief Unit, for they came 
into the villages of Hombleux and Esmery- 
Hallon, assigned to the latter, to put up bar- 
racks. This Smith College Unit was pri- 
marily a rehabilitation unit, the first to be 
sent out by a woman's college to France. It 
received its assignment of villages through the 
American Fund for French Wounded, and 
worked as a part of the French Service de 
Sante until transferred to the American Red 
Cross in February, 1918. 



102 Helping France 

Its personnel of sixteen members covered 
sixteen villages, or a territory of thirty-six 
square miles. Its method, in general, was to 
give outright the larger necessities, such as 
furniture, bedding and stoves, but to sell at a 
low cost smaller articles, such as clothing, 
kitchen utensils, and soap. Live stock also 
was sold, for the reason that what was paid for 
was appreciated and cared for by its owner. 
Milk, too, was sold from a herd of cows, at 
six cents a quart. And all of these articles 
were taken by the Unit in their cars through 
the villages, so that their advent, on stated 
days, came to be looked forward to. They 
furnished a neighborhood center of traffic and 
gossip analogous' to the village fair. Like all 
the relief agencies they gave out sewing. 

But the two lines of effort which won the 
warmest praise from the French authorities 
for the Unit, were their dispensaries and their 
activities for children. Two doctors and 
three nurses' aids made the rounds of the vil- 
lages weekly, not only holding dispensaries, 



Direct Intervention 103 

but visiting the patients in their homes. Con- 
ditions needing the attention of the visitors 
charged with relief, or of those occupied with 
children, were then noted and acted on. 
Most of the patients being children, the chil- 
dren's visitors were the doctor's strong allies. 

Yet they were careful to identify them- 
selves unmistakably with their special func- 
tion, which was to bring happiness to the six 
hundred children in their charge. These 
children had survived strange and terrible 
things; bombardments, deportations, whole- 
sale destruction, the billetings of hostile 
troops, with all the incident restrictions upon 
them, the no less alien appearance of the Brit- 
ish troops who found them in their still 
smoking ruins, and told them that they were 
free. They had, most of them, neither fathers 
nor elder brothers, since these were either at 
the front or hostages of war. Without schools, 
without churches, they had run wild for three 
and a half years. 

Such children needed diversion, and for 



104 Helping France 

them play centers were established in every 
village. Schools, behind the front, were bound 
to function irregularly, however devoted the 
teachers. Those unable to attend school 
were taught; sewing classes were held for the 
girls and carpentry classes for the boys. A 
traveling library of a thousand volumes re- 
joiced the hearts of both young and old. For 
it must never be forgotten that the French 
peasantry, however close they live to the soil — 
possibly because of it — are among the keenest 
minds in the world. In this respect they are 
analogous to our own old rural stock which 
gave us Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln, 
and our host of country boys who have be- 
come our self-made men. 

The emphasis placed on work for children 
may be judged by the request for the estab- 
lishing of a Red Cross hospital at Nesle. It 
was on behalf of the twelve hundred children 
in Nesle and the surrounding villages that 
this request was made. The medical situa- 
tion was typical of that throughout the devas- 



Direct Intervention 105 

tated area. There was an old hospital, under 
the care of Sisters of Charity, which had been 
used by the Germans and stripped of every- 
thing before their retreat. There was one 
civilian doctor who had literally no instru- 
ments, no drugs, and no means of convey- 
ance. There was a military surgeon, who, in 
addition to his army duties, cared for twenty- 
five villages. There was a midwife, whose 
services at this time were little needed, so 
long had families been separated. 

A former tuberculosis pavilion, sunny and 
pleasantly set in a quaint garden, was allotted 
to the American Red Cross. The staff, 
consisting of the doctor, a trained nurse, and 
two nurses' aids, arrived at nightfall, cold and 
wet. No fire awaited them, but there was 
promise of future warmth in a white tiled 
Dutch stove which their predecessor, the Herr 
Doktor of some German staff, had had built in 
for his comfort. It was out of repair, as was 
the plumbing, and the whole place was in need 
of more than a spring house cleaning. But 



io6 Helping France 

it was rapidly put in order, and two wards of 
twelve beds, white and spotless, made ready 
for the little patients. The Pavilion Joffre, 
as it was named, was the only civilian hos- 
pital within a radius of twenty-five miles. A 
travel ng dispensary was part of the equip- 
ment of the hospital, and visited seven out- 
lying villages. At the suggestion of the 
Mayor of Voyennes, one of the towns served, 
it carried a shower bath. Fresh milk, sup- 
plied by the authorities, and canned milk, by 
the American Red Cross, was distributed to 
infants and supplementary feeding given to 
undernourished children. 

In brief, the service of the little hospital at 
Nesle was a home service. Its staff physi- 
cians add their quota of testimony to the 
character of the people they were privileged 
to help. Though large families in this section 
are the rule and though the able-bodied and 
the bread winners were absent, there was no 
thought of putting the waifs and strays of 
war into institutions. Individual families in 



Direct Intervention 107 

the communes took the orphans into their 
already crowded hovels, fed and clothed and 
cared for them. The war, which had leveled 
their homes, had leveled them in a common 
misfortune. And as one wonders how the old 
farm buildings, those massive, isolated en- 
tities of the thirteenth century can be rebuilt, 
one wonders also if the patriarchal form of 
life they typify can ever be revived. Has 
not a new consciousness of solidarity, of neigh- 
borliness been born, which will outlast the 
war? In this consciousness, the American 
Red Cross, coming from so great a distance, 
so unknown a country, on an errand of mercy 
which expresses the solidarity of the whole 
world, has its share. 




liiiiiliiiHWiiiiiisBiiiiiitllliiiuiituiiiiuiUHUMiiiHiiumMiiitiW'Htiuaiummuili 
' bUUtllUUUiMUMIUUlllltAUUWIUI*HilillllUlUMtMl(llllL4l|!!!llH!l||lltiWl('. 

^_AtUUUU\l\UtVllUWttllMltililMiUi«'UUIUllt|l<llllUlllK)«alW^UUiltUUI!(Mtllll(UUA'* 

Laon Cathedral 

Reflexions et Croquis sur V Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wybo. 
Hachette et Cie., Paris. 



CHAPTER IX 

"polishing the tarnished mirrors" 

IN the midst of its separate activities, the 
American Red Cross as a distributing cen- 
ter must not be overlooked. There were 
two warehouses, one at Ham, and the other at 
Nesle, supplying the region from Peronne to 
Golancourt. These had a transportation ser- 

108 



"Polishing Tarnished Mirrors" 109 

vice of five trucks. The activity of this 
branch may be judged by the testimony of a 
representative of the French Red Cross that 
it furnished sixty per cent of all the aid given 
in this sector. Yet there were strong and 
efficient agencies in the field ; that of the Gov- 
ernment itself not being the least. M. Quel- 
lien, the special sous-prefet at Nesle charged 
with the problems of reconstruction, was in- 
tensely interested in the needs of his depart- 
ment. He made the federation of the soci- 
eties working with him to this end a real 
thing, calling them into conference together 
each month, sharing with them what sup- 
plies he had at his disposal, and requiring of 
them in turn monthly reports. Pie went 
about in person, not only to inspect, but to 
learn how he might be of service to them. 
His zeal on behalf of the civilians was, if any- 
thing, surpassed by that of the commandant 
of the Third Army in charge of this sector, 
stationed at Ham. He again was rivaled by 
his colleague, the commandant at Guiscard, 



no Helping France 

whose interest ranged from large contribu- 
tions from his private purse, and rebuilding 
of villages by details of soldiers, to hunting up 
a donkey — a very small and gentle donkey — 
to carry relief supplies. The Department of 
Agriculture, already mentioned, was also 
strong in the Somme. Its tractors were 
busy plowing almost on the heels of the 
German retreat. The military chefs de ser- 
vice had their offices in every considerable 
group of villages; the repairing of farm im- 
plements, and the selling of army horses no 
longer fit for campaigning, but still useful in 
the furtherance of their plan, were syste- 
matically carried on. 

Among private agencies, the French Red 
Cross, represented by the Union des Femmes 
de France, was most fortunate in its dele- 
gates at Nesle, M. and Mme. Amedee Vernes. 
M. Vernes, a manufacturer of large interests 
and a member of one of those Protestant 
families of culture which have kept their 
faith since the days of the Huguenots, took 




A Street in Ham. 




The Mill on the Somme, Ham. 

Apren le Recul Allemand, Mars 1917. Noyon, Guiscard, Ham: 
Gueritte. Vernant & Dolle, Imprimeurs, Paris. 



Armand 



"Polishing Tarnished Mirrors" in 

his wife and went to live in Nesle. The fact 
that they had themselves lost much, and had 
given their two sons to the cause, made them 
peculiarly sympathetic with the people whom 
they were trying to assist. It was M. Vernes 
who was designated by the Ministry of the 
Interior to be the head of the departmental 
federation of private organizations under M. 
Quellien. At Ham, Mme. Roussel headed 
another committee for the Union. She, too, 
is a remarkable character — for she, like M. 
and Mme. Vernes, is again back at her post. 
Though eighty years of age, she nursed the 
French wounded in Ham throughout the 
German occupation. German officers, nat- 
urally, were quartered upon her; gentle- 
manly appearing men, very punctilious in 
handing her in to dinner every night. But 
on the day of their departure, they packed 
up her ancestral clock before her eyes, and 
loaded it onto a van, and took it to Germany. 
Mme. Vernes and Mme. Roussel, besides 
distributing relief supplies running up into 



H2 Helping France 

between twenty and thirty thousand articles, 
organized two flourishing sewing circles. In 
Nesle, one hundred and sixty women were 
employed. The material and the sewing 
machines and a considerable amount of money 
were in each case furnished by the American 
Red Cross. In fact the Union des Femmes 
de France speaks itself in its Bulletin de 
Guerre of the aid accorded it throughout by 
us. "The American Red Cross," it reads, 
"places generously at the disposal of the del- 
egate and the nurses of the Union des Femmes 
de France, articles of every kind and lends 
them the precious assistance of its automo- 
biles in visiting the villages and assuring their 
supply of food." 

Located at Nesle was also another efficient 
relief agency, the French Wounded Emergency 
Fund. This was a British unit, of eight to 
ten workers, having nineteen villages west of 
Nesle in their charge. But as they had their 
own warehouse and their transport service, 
they were little indebted to us. On the taking 



"Polishing Tarnished Mirrors" 113 

over of the French lines by the British, how- 
ever, in January, 1918, they were compelled 
by the regulations of the British Army to 
retire, these regulations not allowing British 
civilian workers so near the front. Their vil- 
lages were then taken over by the Union des 
Femmes de France. 

An interesting experiment at Rosieres, half 
way between Nesle and Amiens, started oddly 
enough under the auspices of the British Army 
just as that same army closed down the work 
of its countrywomen at Nesle. But the work 
at Rosieres was undertaken by a Franco- 
American agency, the Fund for War Devas- 
tated Villages, which did not come under the 
rules laid down by the British Army for organi- 
zations of its own nationality. To Rosieres 
and six neighboring villages comprising five 
hundred persons, one American worker was 
assigned. There is an advantage in not hav- 
ing a large staff which this worker fully 
realized; she got her cooperation from her 
villagers themselves. Among them she was 



114 Helping France 

fortunate in finding such mayors and country 
gentlemen as have been written about in all 
French accounts of the invaded territory, 
men — and women too — who by their bravery 
have upheld the best traditions of Picardy. 
At Beaufort, for example, lived in his Chateau 
the old Count de Lupel. In 1914, when the 
Germans first took the village, they requisi- 
tioned certain of the count's employees, to 
serve as hostlers, since the count was well 
known to them as a famous breeder of horses. 
But the count had hidden his men, nor would 
he deliver them over, although he was threat- 
ened and actually led out to be shot. In 1918, 
on the return of the Germans, equally solicit- 
ous for his dependents, he gave up his last 
horse and wagon to them and escaped himself 
on foot. The mayor of the commune was a 
man no less devoted, and possessed in addi- 
tion, that marvel of energy in French village 
politics, a wife. The mayor's wife was a 
devout Catholic, and as such opposed to the 
public school, which in France, as in America, 



"Polishing Tarnished Mirrors" 115 

allows no religious instruction. She, there- 
fore, opened a Catholic school, and saw to it 
that all the girls, at least, attended. She was 
interested in all matters of public welfare, 
and it was she who ordered and generaled 
the retreat of the villagers in the spring of 
1918. 

But in the three months from January to 
March, before that catastrophe, much had 
been accomplished in rehabilitation. The 
pressing needs of the villages had been met; 
seeds were ready for distribution; children's 
work was starting; a quantity of wool was 
in store for the knitting which was to become 
a village industry. In this general distribu- 
tion, the American Red Cross gave its share. 

About a month later tha the experiment 
at Rosieres there was opened at Peronne, a 
dispensary, hospital, and relief station under 
the joint management of the Village Recon- 
stitue and the Secours aux Blesses Militaires 
of the French Red Cross. Before the Ger- 
man drive, 169 families, in nine villages, 



Ii6 Helping France 

had been reached by the devoted nurses in 
charge. 

Roye, southwest of Nesle, had two relief 
agencies, that of Mrs. Duryea of New York, 
and that of the Secours d'TJrgence. The 
former operated in many villages, giving out 
emergency relief. The latter established here 
a poste de secours which was a model of its 
kind. The Secours d'Urgence makes the 
proud claim of being the first French society 
to undertake civilian relief in the devastated 
area, and Roye, situated for three years in 
the No-Man's Land of continuous bombard- 
ment, was its first post. Like most of the 
larger French societies, it had been occupied 
up to the spring of 1917 with the needs of the 
soldiers under the well-known name of the 
"Bureau Central des Ecloppes." 

With the liberation of the Somme, an appeal 
came to the Bureau on behalf of the civilian 
population, not from civilians, but from an 
officer in the army. Mile. Javel went up at 
his request and saw the desert about Roye. 



"Polishing Tarnished Mirrors" 117 

Yet what could the Bureau do, with its re- 
sources already strained to the utmost? The 
founders collected ten thousand francs among 
their friends as a beginning. They had, first, 
their typical shelter, and their nurses. With 
the cooperation of the army, they made re- 
pairs. They installed a large farm with a 
dairy, supplying butter and milk. They 
started industries, such as sewing, and in addi- 
tion to sewing circles, gave out work at home. 
They had factories for mattresses and for 
furniture. They equipped and manned com- 
pletely with doctor and nurses, a civilian hos- 
pital of twenty beds at Roye. They had 
gardens tended by children, where four thou- 
sand cabbages were raised. Eventually, they 
cared for sixty-nine villages. Aid for this 
work came to them from many sources, as 
they acknowledge them in their reports, from 
as far away as Sidney, and from the "Croix- 
Rouge Americaine." The support of the lat- 
ter was whole hearted and generous to the 
limit of its capacity at Ham and Nesle. 



Ii8 Helping France 

Although, geographically, the latest effort 
of the Secours d'Urgence for the devastated 
area does not belong to the Somme alone, but 
to all of France, its place is here. It con- 
cerns itself with Christmas. In 1917, through- 
out the liberated area, the government, the 
church, and agencies occupied with relief 
there, gave to the children the first Christmas 
they had had for three years. In 1918, a 
vaster field was freed by the armistice. The 
same effort was repeated. But it was the 
Secours d'Urgence which thought of an ideal 
way. With the approval of no less a person 
than M. Clemenceau they enlisted the chil- 
dren of all the public kindergartens, in all the 
departments of France, to make a Christmas 
for their "unknown brothers and sisters, de- 
prived for so long of every joy." The pres- 
ents came by the millions, each accompanied 
by a little letter to the unknown recipient. 
Most of them were given, not by children of 
wealth, but by the poor, many of them them- 
selves tiny refugees. One little girl of five 



"Polishing Tarnished Mirrors" 119 

came with her teacher to the office of the 
society, to say that she would give her doll. 
"But," she added, "I want to remain with her 
as long as I can." The kind-hearted lady in 
charge of the office told her the very latest 
date on which she must return. When she 
came, with her eyes full of tears, her doll held 
tightly to her cheek, the lady thought she 
would never be able to give it up. But she 
did, saying only: "Please tell her that she 
must take care of my doll as I did, and love 
her as I used to do!" Another story is that 
of a little boy who had nothing, nothing at all 
except some pills. He had been a refugee, 
starved and ill, and these cod-liver oil pills, 
which a doctor had given him, had been a 
great help. He would share them! So, in 
the quaint English of the lady who told the 
incident, "he took them to the Bureau 
preciously, for those pills meant health to him, 
his own health." 

To have aided, much or little as the case 
may be, such efforts as are recorded here, is it 



120 Helping France 

not, in the words a noted French writer quotes 
in regard to this very society, to have helped 
in "polishing the tarnished mirrors, in restor- 
ing the ideal flame? " 




House on the Luce Plateau (near Amiens). 



inflexions et Croquis sur V Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wybo. 
Hachette et Cie., Paris. 



CHAPTER X 



BEHIND THE BRITISH LINES 

THE activities centering at Amiens dif- 
ferentiate themselves sharply from those 
of the southern end of the department. In 
the first place, Amiens was behind the British 
lines which, at this point, never broke. The 
city, itself, though severely bombarded during 
the last German advance in the spring of 1918, 
was not devastated, and stood as a bulwark for 
the territory stretching from it to the channel, 

which the Germans never took. But un- 

121 



122 Helping France 

scathed as it was at the time that the American 
Red Cross entered it, in September, 1917, it 
had been for three years — what it still is — one 
of the main gateways for the passing and re- 
passing of refugees. In the Somme, there 
were over thirty-five thousand of these, not 
counting at all those who had remained in, or 
found their way back to, their villages in the 
devastated area itself. Half of these refugees 
were crowded into the city, which was further 
strained beyond its housing capacity by 
thousands of British troops. Ao*d to this the 
fact that building — except for absolutely neces- 
sary army barracks for army purposes — had 
ended automatically with the call to arms, 
and one can see the enormous problem in 
public health and in housing presented by the 
city of Amiens. In short, in an acute and 
exaggerated form, the problem was the same 
as that facing our city charities at home; con- 
gestion and lack of employment, resulting in 
insufficient nourishment and the spread of 
disease. 



Behind the British Lines 123 

The city of Amiens, the Department of 
which it is the capital, and the Ministry of the 
Interior behind both had already perfected 
an admirable scheme for the handling of the 
transient refugees, who passed from bom- 
barded areas to the south, or from the south 
back to liberated villages. Shelters, in charge 
of the army, were always ready to accommo- 
date them, to the number of twelve hundred 
and fifty at a time; a stipulated sum of 
money was given each refugee on his arrival 
for immediate needs, food, of course, and 
clothing as necessary. Afterwards he was 
painstakingly helped to reach his destination. 
Lieut. Pianelli, who administered this relief, 
was himself a refugee from St. Quentin, and 
his own wife was a German captive. It goes 
without saying that the handling of the end- 
less stream of refugees at Amiens was done 
with sympathetic care. 

But the refugee unable to get beyond 
Amiens, or choosing to remain there, became 
the concern of the city and of the prefecture. 



124 Helping France 

If in need, he had, of course, his allowance 
from the government, as a refugee. Or if 
the dependent of a soldier, an approximately 
equal amount was paid. Of the ten thousand 
refugees in Amiens to whom these allowances 
were granted nearly fifteen hundred were the 
wives, widows or children of the soldiers of 
France. Committees, styled departmental 
committees, composed of public-spirited cit- 
izens, assisted in the care of the refugees of 
their respective departments. Of these, there 
were four; that of the Nord, that of the Aisne, 
that of the Pas-de-Calais, and that of the 
Somme itself. There were private agencies 
also, the largest and most influential being 
that of the Secours aux Blesses Militaires of 
the French Red Cross. The Secours d'Ur- 
gence, and the Somme DeVast6e among French 
societies, had posts established here also, 
the latter being one of the many organiza- 
tions founded by the wealthy and patriotic 
ladies of the devastated area itself. 

Among foreign societies, and most directly 



Behind the British Lines 125 

concerning this narrative, were the American 
Fund for French Wounded and the Secours 
Anglo- Americain pour les Rlfugies. The lat- 
ter, under American management, had already 
been operating two years among the fugitives 
in Amiens when the American Red Cross del- 
egate arrived. Five resident workers, of whom 
one was a nurse, and six French volunteer 
workers comprised its staff. With the close 
cooperation of the Preset, one of whose daugh- 
ters was a regular volunteer visitor, they or- 
ganized the type of charitable relief we know 
in America as district visiting. They also 
started the first workroom in Amiens for the 
women refugees. Their support, while drawn 
from many sources, came largely, at this time, 
from the American Relief Clearing House. 
They therefore naturally turned to the Amer- 
ican Red Cross for a similar subsidy. The 
result was that the latter took over and en- 
larged their activities and absorbed their 
personnel. 

In addition to this, and in cooperation with 



126 Helping France 

the American Fund for French Wounded, the 
American Red Cross through its Children's 
Bureau opened a dispensary for the refugees in 
Amiens, in March, 1918. This was an exten- 
sion of the dispensary of Nesle. But in so far 
as these two lines of service affect the refugees, 
the details of their development fall outside 
the limits of this book. In fact, the dele- 
gate of the Red Cross in Amiens, being as- 
signed to the undevastated area of the Somme, 
was in reality the first of the many refugee 
delegates who were later sent by the Refugee 
Bureau of the Red Cross to similar service in 
every department of France. 

Two phases of the Red Cross work in Amiens 
belong here, however; that of the warehouse, 
and that of the workroom already mentioned, 
started by the Secours Anglo-Americain. 
From a group of twelve workers, in September, 
1917, this had grown in February, 1918, to 
thirty-two workers, turning out four hundred 
and eighty finished garments a week. It con- 
sumed materials on a wholesale scale, as illus- 



Behind the British Lines 127 

trated by requisitions for four thousand meters 
flannel, fifteen hundred meters sateen, black, 
for pinafores, fifteen hundred meters velveteen, 
for suits, thirty-six dozen boxes of thread, 
and ten thousand buttons. But the unique 
service of this workroom was the one designed 
and carried into operation by the Red Cross 
delegate. It cut and shipped to all work- 
rooms within reaching distance, the garments 
which they in turn made up. Thus it became 
the center of supply for the ouvroirs at Nesle, 
Ham, Lassigny and Noyon, already mentioned, 
an important cog in the chain of cooperation 
which the American Red Cross was trying to 
forge. It was also, with every ouvroir in France, 
a connecting link between the refugees tem- 
porarily, at least, static, and the refugees in 
transit or in process of establishment, the one 
class being engaged in filling that immense 
reservoir from which the other might draw. 

The warehouse in Amiens, like the work- 
room, served both classes of unfortunates, the 
refugees in the undevastated area, and the 



128 Helping France 

sinistres (sufferers) and rapatries, (repatriates) 
as the French conveniently designate them, 
who were trying to make a fresh start in the 
two devastated departments north of the 
Somme, the Nord and the Pas-de-Calais. 
Arras had been selected as a center for the 
latter ^and a separate delegate appointed to it, 
but an actual warehouse was never established 
there. This city, in normal times possessing 
a population of 29,000, had been under con- 
stant bombardment since the beginning of the 
war, until in the spring of 1917, the victory of 
Vimy Ridge freed it from immediate menace. 
At one time only three hundred souls re- 
mained in it, subsisting in cellars. Its his- 
toric town hall was already in ruins; the 
wheat lands about it were devastated by one 
of the greatest struggles of the war. The 
porticoes of the Petite Place, where "on the 
prettiest stage in the world the triumphal 
fete of the grain was conducted with all its 
peaceable outcry," lay shattered; the fields 
themselves were shell-plowed wastes. 



Behind the British Lines 129 

Yet the prefecture and the army were 
already at work, with tractors and construc- 
tion gangs. The American Red Cross, enter- 
ing on its activities here simultaneously with 
the private French agencies, instead of after 
them, as in the Somme and the Oise, put itself 
as did they, at the disposal of the civil authori- 
ties. No federation of the societies was at- 
tempted for this reason; and the coopera- 
tion of the Red Cross delegate with the 
government was direct. This was consid- 
ered the most practical method also, owing 
to the stringent rulings of the British army 
zone. 

As it was, great difficulties were encoun- 
tered, no warehouse could be found, and no 
transportation by truck arranged. To make 
the situation more difficult, there was not — as 
there is not to this day* — a direct rail com- 
munication with Amiens. The railroad across 
the battlefields has been wiped out. But at 
last, on February 25, 1918, the first general 

* January, 1919. 



130 Helping France 

distribution to the outlying villages was made. 
The mayors of thirty-two communes were in- 
vited to come in person to receive the goods 
allotted to them. Into the ruins of Arras, 
that wintry day,"they came, in every imagin- 
able makeshift of a vehicle, not to chaffer or 
to buy, but to receive the gifts to their com- 
munes of the American Red Cross. From 
the Church of the Ardents, half-destroyed, 
were taken four hundred and twenty-seven 
wheelbarrows which had been stored there; 
from the warerooms loaned by the Prefecture, 
two hundred and twelve sacks of sugar and 
twelve thousand francs' worth of farming 
tools. 

What a contrast to former market days 
when "under the arcades were heaped casks, 
boxes, coils of rope, hardware, faience, old 
iron, a host of heterogeneous objects. And 
amid them all, the smell of the barrooms, of 
pipes, of 'bistouilles,' of pungent beer; the 
slow descent and balancing of the tame 
pigeons, and at regular intervals, the melo- 



Behind the British Lines 131 

dies of the chimes which seemed to shake from 
their toy gables showers of goblins and 
gnomes."* 

Yet a beginning .in rehabilitation in the 
Pas-de-Calais was made, and plans were under 
way for a second delegate and a larger staff to 
push a larger scheme of service when the 
spring drive came. To-day Arras lies level 
with the plain about it — not even the belfry 
stands to mark the site of the old town hall. 

* Henri Potez : Villes Meurtries de France : Arras. 




Lowland Farm, (near Soissons.) 

Reflexions et Croquis sur V Architecture au Pays de France: Georgea Wybo. 
Hachette et Cie., Paris. 

CHAPTER XI 



THE PERSONAL TOUCH 

WHO has not heard of the bitterly con- 
tested Chemin des Dames, of the well- 
nigh impregnable plateau of Craonne, of the 
capture of Soissons, crowning place of Clovis, 
of St. Quentin, and Chateau-Thierry where the 
American dead lie to-day on the hill slopes, a 
memorial to the valor of the AmericanArmy 
to which was given the glory of saving Paris 
in 1918? All these allied victories belong to 
that comparatively small political division now 

132 



The Personal Touch 133 

called the Aisne, but formerly known by the 
proud title of the He de France. All were 
preceded by defeats which laid in ruins the 
five arrondis semen ts of the department. 

Naturally the devastation of the Aisne is 
quite complete. In the summer of 1917, after 
the German retreat, the heights of Craonne, 
and the Chemin des Dames upon their summit, 
were still in the hands of the Germans. About 
the base of this promontory to the south and 
the west lay the lowlands of the liberated area, 
from which fifty per cent of the civilians had 
been carried into captivity, and the remainder 
of the population had fled as refugees. 
} Before the war, "the He de France was 
always a great center of crowded population, 
a population gay and seemly, distributed not 
in large cities, but in little villages and ham- 
lets which clustered in the valleys and on the 
hills, animating the countryside and the per- 
spective of the horizon by the picturesque sil- 
houettes of their lovely churches, and by the 
grouping of their cheerful cottages embowered 



134 Helping France 

in orchards and gardens. Chateaux, ancient 
and modern, princely or bourgeois, were 
numerous. Everywhere breathed a sense of 
well-being, of ease and of wealth."* 

Into this region, once so fertile and now so 
disfigured, the American Red Cross entered 
in September, 1917, establishing at Soissons 
what grew to be the largest of its warehouses, 
which never carried a stock of less than ten 
thousand dollars' worth. The other agencies 
at work in this department for the returning 
fugitives were. only four in number; the gov- 
ernment and the army, the American Fund 
for French Wounded, the Aisne Devastee and 
the Village Reconstitue working together, and 
the Bishop of Soissons. Between the Amer- 
ican Fund for French Wounded as a whole, 
and the American Red Cross, a definite affilia- 
ation had been established, and this was ex- 
tended to the civilian section of the American 
Fund located in the eastern part of the Aisne 
at Blerancourt. The history of this society 

* Marius Vaehon: Les Villes Martyres de France et de Belgique. 



The Personal Touch 135 

and of our relations with it, which covered 
work in six of the devastated departments, 
becomes of interest. 

The American Fund for French Wounded 
was, in point of time, the first of all American 
societies to come to the aid of France. It grew 
out of the American Committee formed by 
Mr. Hoover in London for the relief of Amer- 
ican refugees, who, by the thousands, were 
driven out of the continent at the opening of 
hostilities in 1914. By autumn, their needs 
had been met, but in October a French woman 
came to the office of the Committee and 
chanced to find Mrs. Lathrop there. She 
begged for the French wounded, and so 
effectively that a committee was formed by 
Mrs. Lathrop in London, with a supporting 
branch in America. In 1915, this American 
branch established its own headquarters in 
Paris, as the American Fund for French 
Wounded. It has worked from the beginning 
with the French army and more recently with 
the American army. But it has also done 



136 Helping France 

work for civilians, for the same reason that 
the American Red Cross has done work for 
civilians, because war was carried systemat- 
ically by Germany into the homes of civilians. 
The first appeal for this help came from Noyon. 
From that time the A. F. F. W. began the 
collecting of supplies for civilian relief. In all 
the chapters of the society in America, gar- 
ments cut in French patterns were made. 
Money was raised, equipment bought, and in 
June, 1917, the Civilian Section began its 
work. To it the military authorities assigned 
two posts in the devastated area, one at 
Blerancourt in the Aisne, and the other, 
manned by the Smith College Unit, already 
mentioned, in the Somme. 

In Blerancourt itself three hundred of the 
fifteen hundred peace-time population were 
back. Besides Blerancourt, fourteen neigh- 
boring villages were assigned to the unit. 
Before the spring offensive of 1918, these vil- 
lages had increased to forty. Repair work 
was effectively carried on with the help of the 



The Personal Touch 137 

army; and the shelters erected were in each 
case furnished throughout. A dispensary was 
opened in charge of a nurse, and later of a doc- 
tor. A children's department under a French 
teacher of special training in industrial schools 
was established, with cooking classes for the 
girls, carpentry classes for the boys, and gym- 
nastics for all. It is interesting to note that 
the cooperation of army officers was enlisted 
for these carpentry classes, and the actual 
teaching done by soldiers assigned by them 
for the purpose. The material used was 
largely the boxes in which supplies for the 
committee had been packed. The tables, 
chairs, and book cases made went'either to the 
school, or to the boys' own homes. 

There was a model dairy, from~which fifty 
families were supplied with milk. Most im- 
portant of all, there was a comprehensive 
agricultural programme commensurate with 
the richness of the soil, which yields normally 
three times the average crop per acre of that 
produced in other parts of France. 



138 Helping France 

Besides the American Fund for French 
Wounded, the Aisne Devaste*e and the Vil- 
lage Reconstitue* were the only private agen- 
cies which had established themselves in the 
district. The function of the Village Recon- 
stitue\ here as elsewhere, was to erect the plant 
for the society distributing relief. There was 
need of this; for at the head of the Aisne 
DeVaste*e were two devoted women of the 
department, the one, Mme. Firino, having 
given over what remained of her chateau to 
the army, and the other, Mme. Houde*, being 
likewise a typical chatelaine of the north 
country — the chatelaine of a ruin. But Mme. 
Houde* was typical in another, more vital 
sense. Before the war she had taken the 
greatest interest in the welfare of her depend- 
ents. A friend who lived with her was a 
nurse. With her help she established gym- 
nastic classes for a hundred young girls and 
boys of the village: She was concerned also 
about their manners and their morals, in- 
structing classes herself in that greatest of all 



The Personal Touch 139 

arts, the making of a home. It was inevitable 
that Mme. Houde" should have interested her- 
self, after the invasion, not only in the wel- 
fare of her own people, but in that of the entire 
department. It was owing to her that the 
Aisne Devast6e was organized. In the early 
spring of 1917, it had been able to send 
emergent help to more than fifty communes. 
It had its workrooms, in the uninvaded de- 
partments, from which its storeroom in Paris 
was supplied. But it had not that most 
essential thing in the devastated area, trans- 
portation. 

This lack, the American Red Cross and the 
American Fund for French Wounded, uniting 
in the Red Cross center at Soissons, did their 
best to meet. As more of the invaded terri- 
tory was freed by the successive advances of 
the French army during the autumn, lack of 
personnel was another keenly felt want. Two 
members of the Blerancourt Unit, and two 
members of the staff of the American Red 
Cross, were therefore sent out as agents to 



140 Helping France 

report on the actual needs of the villages in the 
care of the Aisne Devastee. In accordance 
with the findings of the visitors, the goods in 
the warehouse were distributed. 

Other distributors of Red Cross relief were 
the Bishop of Soissons and his priests. From 
the latter came indirectly a touching appeal 
for help. It was brought by the Comtesse de 
Bigode, whose own chateau and village were 
laid in ruins, and whose husband, remaining 
for three years as mayor of the village during 
the German occupation, had been taken 
like so many, a hostage to Germany. But 
the Comtesse asked help only for the Bishop, 
who was "in complete need of everything for 
his clergy and had nothing with which to cel- 
ebrate divine service — a black misery." Nor 
did he know where to turn for help, though 
he had come back to his ruined cathedral in 
Soissons to do what he could. The Bishop's 
equally touching thanks for the aid the Amer- 
ican Red Cross gave belong here also. "With 
the sending of my receipt for the packages 



The Personal Touch 141 

which you shipped me," he writes, "I con- 
sider it my humble duty to express to you my 
warm feelings of gratitude. I pray God, the 
source of all charity, to reward worthily those 
who, following his Holy Commandments, have 
compassion on their unfortunate brethren." 

But this help was by no means given to the 
usual poor relief of the church. For instance, 
one village cure", using his head as well as his 
heart, found that his parishioners in need of 
the stoves and boilers furnished him by the 
American Red Cross for distribution, were 
anxious to pay for them. He therefore sold 
them on the installment plan, netted ninety- 
five francs and reinvested this capital in 
articles the Red Cross did not carry in stock. 

The sous-prefet and the mayors of the com- 
munes, as in the Pas-de-Calais, owing to the 
few agencies at work, had more put at their 
direct disposal in the Aisne than in the depart- 
ments where the relief agencies were more 
numerous. Here, too, cooperation was ex- 
cellent. One town received a carload of pro- 



142 Helping France 

visions which was unloaded by the school chil- 
dren and placed in the mayor's cellar awaiting 
his distribution. In another, Pommiers (Ap- 
ple Orchards), where the mayor, an old man, 
was also the delegate of the Aisne De" vastee for 
the district, hot lunches were provided for the 
school children during the winter. Without 
this the children, many of whom walked two 
or three kilometres, could not have attended 
school. In another village, practically inac- 
cessible to markets, an old woman was set 
up in a grocery store; a double form of help, 
giving her an income and the village a means 
of subsistence. 

It becomes evident that tne work of the 
American Red Cross in the Aisne, centering 
as it did both investigation and supply in the 
warehouse organization at Soissons, and using 
so few outside agents, was the most personal 
of the four warehouse organizations already 
studied. It was the least formal, requiring 
no set federation, but preventing overlapping 
by this centralization. Yet it covered a wide 



The Personal Touch 143 

territory, and already had another branch 
established at Chateau-Thierry, a hospital, 
and a chain of workrooms in process of forma- 
tion when the spring drive came. 

It abounds in personal incidents, such as 
that of the young girl who ran to embrace the 
visitor of the American Fund for French 
Wounded, thanking her for what she had done. 
"But," the visitor protested, "I have never 
seen you before." "No," was the reply, "for 
I was not here, but you did everything for my 
mother and my grandmother, and that is more 
than if you had done it for me." There was 
the poor old woman in Chateau-Thierry who 
pressed thirty francs upon the Red Cross 
delegate saying that she and some of the 
neighbors wished to give them as a contribu- 
tion because the Red Cross had moved some 
sick friends of theirs from the danger zone to 
Paris. There was the small merchant whose 
house and store were destroyed by bombs, but 
whose household goods were rescued. "Say 
also," he writes, "to those gentlemen of the 



144 Helping France 

American Red Cross how grateful I am to 
them for having saved my cherished heirlooms. 
What the days to follow may bring, we do not 
know, but the remembrance of the kindly feel- 
ings you have evoked in us, will remain alive 
and be for us a precious comfort." 

The Red Cross kept its economic end in 
view, to aid the producers, and primarily the 
agricultural producers, of the Aisne. It kept 
in touch also with those needs which are met 
only by personal interest. One is reminded 
of the ether dream of a certain soldier, who fan- 
cied that he of all living beings had survived 
the destruction of the world. Only he and 
God were left to survey the ghastly inferno 
of His once fair handiwork. So vivid was the 
dream, so horrible the sense of utter isolation, 
that the patient turned to the nurse: "I beg 
your pardon," he said, "but would you mind 
just touching my hand?" That personal con- 
tact is the most valuable gift that the Red 
Cross gave in the inferno of the Aisne. 




Street in Fontenoy. 

Reflexions et Croquia wr V Architecture aw Pays de France: Georges Wybo. 
Hachette et Cie., Paris. 

CHAPTER XII 



OUR PRESENCE WITH THEM 

ON March 21, 1918, began the German 
drive. It was not unexpected; all 
through the winter the thunder of guns 
shook the barracks and the ruins of the re- 
turning refugees, who crept ever nearer to the 
lines. From Cambrai, St. Quentin, and the 
Chemin des Dames came daily rumors of 
advance or of retreat. Overhead the Ger- 
man aeroplanes increased their activities. 
Each month the moon, rising to the full, 

145 



146 Helping France 

and lighting the earth with traitorous beauty, 
became more true to the name the poilus gave 
it, "La lune boche." 

But no one anticipated the brutish strength 
of the German impact, least of all the British 
army, consolidating the new lines from Cam- 
brai to St. Quentin which it had taken over 
from the French. It was just northeast of 
Ham, toward St. Quentin, that the British 
line gave way. Not two miles from this front 
was the outpost of a Friends' constructive unit; 
in like manner the Philadelphia Unit,_only five 
miles back, was in full track of the German 
flood. At Rosieres, at Nesle, at Greeourt, 
at Roye, the various relief units, isolated, 
without news except from the flying troops, 
placed all their resources of transport at the 
service of the civilian authorities and of the 
army, to evacuate the populace. With their 
prot£g6s they kept just out of reach of the 
Uhlan cavalry. Down through Lassigny and 
Noyon swept once again the German army, 
confident of reaching Paris at last. Back 




Born in Flight from Lens, 1914. 



Our Presence With Them 147 

before it fell the relief workers; from Noyon to 
Compiegne, from Compiegne to Senlis, and 
from Soissons at length to Chateau-Thierry, 
where the great drive stopped. 

Meantime from the Paris office, the head 
of the Bureau of Reconstruction and Relief 
hurried northward, to take charge of the sit- 
uation so far as the Red Cross was concerned. 
With him went also the head of the refugee 
service. From this point until the armistice 
on November 11th, the history of the activi- 
ties of the American Red Cross is a history of 
emergent relief. In all the territory where it 
was working out its experiments of construc- 
tive service, its work was swept away, and the 
people for whom it labored joined the already 
vast army of homeless refugees. 

The loss of property, of the home built like 
an island of coral by the patient toil of hun- 
dreds of years above the vicissitudes of for- 
tune — again we have no conception of what its 
loss meant to the peasant of France. It was 
attachment to his home, his property, that had 



148 Helping France 

rooted him, immovable, in the path of the 
invader. He literally stayed until the last 
gun was fired. And even in his flight, be- 
hold him, encumbered with rabbits, chickens 
and pet canaries, or driving before him in the 
hurly-burly of bombardment, his sheep or 
his herd of cows. "I remember," said a 
French woman of letters already quoted, "a 
poor old woman (a refugee) whom I saw at the 
Gare du Nord; she had lost two sons at the 
front, suffered many miseries; she said to me: 
'To suffer, to lose one's children, it is sad and 
it is hard, yet when one is at home, everything 
can be endured. But when one has to flee, 
to abandon his house and all that he has to 
the keeping of others, that is the worst of 
all.'" 

Like the American Red Cross, every relief 
agency turned its hand to the immediate 
need not only of the refugees but of the sol- 
diers. For there were in the path of the 
German advance at this time as yet no regu- 
lar delegates of the military department of the 



Our Presence With Them 149 

American Red Cross, so unexpected had been 
the catastrophe. The warehouses, hastily 
emptied, went to the supply of the British, 
French or American armies, and whatever 
could not be utilized in this way was burned. 
One reads of night rides of Red Cross dele- 
gates over shell-swept roads to bring ban- 
dages to a first-aid dressing station installed 
in one of these warehouses. Our own men, 
the soldiers of the immortal Rainbow Division, 
were supplied with hot drinks and food at a 
wayside canteen. Italian soldiers of the Gari- 
baldi command, wounded and lying upon 
straw, were given sheets and bedding and 
bandages. The evacuation of Reims and of 
Chalons taxed the transportation service. A 
military hospital at Beauvais, so desperately 
emergent that no Red Cross nurses could be 
gotten up in time, was taken charge of by the 
Smith College Unit. In like manner, the 
Philadelphia Unit drove its cars as ambu- 
lances behind the French lines. Other units, 
such as the American Committee for Devas- 



150 Helping France 

tated France, into which the civilian section 
of the American Fund for French Wounded 
had separated, were large enough to carry on 
both refugee and military aid. Soldiers' can- 
teens, canteens for the harvesters who fol- 
lowed hard on the wake of the Allied advance, 
dispensaries, farm colonies, children's colo- 
nies and refugee committees in the unin- 
vaded departments to which their delegates 
had accompanied the refugees indicate the 
wide scope of their work. 

The holding of the Germans at Chateau- 
Thierry was succeeded, as all the world knows, 
by the victorious offensive of Marshal Foch. 
Everything bent to the grim final effort, and 
the civilian service of the American Red Cross 
with it. On the one hand, it enlarged its 
personnel and its supplies in the departments 
of the interior to serve the refugees. On the 
other, it shared its personnel, its stores and 
its warehouses with the military service of the 
Red Cross for the soldiers. These latter were 
no longer exclusively the poilus for whom the 



Our Presence With Them 151 

Red Cross had labored up to this time. They 
were overwhelmingly, overpoweringly our own. 
In the trenches, in the hospitals, marching 
along the road or lying under the wooden 
crosses beside it, one saw them everywhere, 
our boys. America had come at last into the 
war. 

With her advent on the front, there was not 
only a change in emphasis between the depart- 
ment of military affairs and the department of 
civilian affairs of the Red Cross. There was a 
corresponding change of organization. Instead 
of the centralization of authority in Paris 
which had existed up to the time of the drive, 
authority was now centralized in the field 
under a zone commander who controlled the 
activities of both military and civilian officers 
therein. The zones of control, furthermore, 
corresponded to the army zones into which 
all France had been divided. Warehouse 
space was shared, or military and civilian 
warehouses complemented each other in the 
same region. There could be no sharp de- 



152 Helping France 

markation between emergencies, civilian or 
military. It was a time to spare red tape and 
to meet the emergency. The health of chil- 
dren, the scourge of tuberculosis, merged into 
public health as affecting our army. The 
Children's Bureau was, therefore, detached 
from the Department of Civilian Relief, and 
placed in charge of the Medical and Surgical 
Department. Civilian sweaters and food sup- 
plies went for soldiers going into or coming 
out of action. Civilian units, such as the 
Smith College Unit and the various units of 
the American Fund for French Wounded ran 
military canteens, or took barge loads of 
wounded down the canals to the hospitals in 
Paris. Conversely, our soldiers became in- 
tensely interested in the needs of the civilians 
in the villages where they were billeted, inso- 
much that an entire new bureau of the Red 
Cross has been created to care for the orphans 
adopted by them. 

The military development of the Red Cross, 
hastened by the catastrophes of the spring 



Our Presence With Them 153 

campaign, was, nevertheless, in the minds 
of the War Council from the beginning; the 
work of the civilians deriving much of its 
value from the fact that we were not at first 
able to put our alliance to effective use on the 
battlefield. Once we took our place in the 
line, however, our prime duty, to the Allies as 
well as to ourselves, was to our own military 
needs. The change, sudden as it was, was 
logical. The service of the American Red 
Cross in the devastated area, far from being a 
loss, was of direct military value both during 
its prosecution and during the retreat. The 
large programme of rehabilitation in which it 
played its part, was as much a measure of war 
as the maneuvers of the army. Like them, 
it was subject to defeat. 

In the words of the head of the Bureau of 
Reconstruction and Relief, just before he left 
Paris to take charge of the danger zone: "On 
the second day of the great German offensive, 
when the communiques plainly showed the 
gravity of the situation, the possibility of a 



154 Helping France 

second invasion, and the destruction of our 
work in the devastated region, this Bureau 
wishes to go on record as absolutely con- 
vinced that it has done too little rather than 
too much and that it intends to continue the 
work, whatever menace may be ahead, so 
long as the French civilians are allowed near 
the lines and so long as they are in need. It 
is not too much to say that the work of this 
Bureau has been the main reliance of those 
civilians in at least three French departments. 
If the work is to be wrecked, we can only bow 
to the fortune of war, but we want no one to 
think that we regret the presence of civilians 
in the zone or our own presence there with 
them, or to think that we count as lost one 
cent of money or one ounce of effort expended 
in their behalf." 

Our presence with them, that is what 
counted. The sous-pr6fet of Compiegne said 
to our delegate there: "I shall never forget 
that you stood by us when everyone else had 
left." In spite of the German drive, in spite 



Our Presence With Them 155 

of military exigencies, to have kept in touch 
with his civilian co-laborers, such is the record 
of the American Red Cross delegate in the 
Oise. Most of the agencies there, dislodged 
and deflected as they were, are back in their 
old villages. Through the warehouse in Com- 
piegne, the American Red Cross has been 
able to render them more valuable service this 
year than last. The vicissitudes, the losses 
shared together have made a stronger bond of 
union than could otherwise have been welded. 
New societies have come into the field. The 
American Red Cross itself at the first return 
of the civilians has opened a new service in a 
traveling dispensary. 

The cardinal fact of the retreat, then, is 
this: That everywhere, in the Oise, in the 
Somme, and in the Aisne, where the lines of 
the armies were broken, the lines of the Amer- 
ican Red Cross — those lines of mercy, of suc- 
cor, of emergent service — held. 




Village Hall at Fismes. 

Reflexions et Croquis sur V Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wybo. 
Hachette et Cie., Paris. 

CHAPTER XIII 



THE ROAD TO VERDUN 

ALMOST due east from Chateau-Thierry 
lies Chalons, and beyond Chalons, Ver- 
dun. Chalons is the departmental center of 
the Marne; Verdun, the frontier fortress of 
the Meuse, upon which for four years has 
pivoted the defense of the world. These two 
departments, shaken though they were by the 
German offensive of 1918, held their ground. 
In one of them, the Marne, the reconstruction 

156 



The Road to Verdun 157 

work begun by the English Friends in 1914 
still continues. It affords that positive argu- 
ment for the return to the soil of its tillers 
which many questioned after the disaster of 
the Somme. 

Like her sister departments, the Marne had 
been devastated. Here in her valleys was 
fought the battle for the possession of Paris 
in the summer of 1914. On the southern side 
of the river, one sees everywhere the skeletons 
of once smiling villages; in the marshes of 
St. Gond, one hears, a whole squadron of 
German cavalry was sucked down to death. 
At Heiltz-le-Maurupt, the Prince of Hesse 
made his entry, and sacked and set the village 
on fire. A veteran of 1870 was shot as he 
stood in his doorway; the skirt of his old wife 
who stood beside him was riddled with bullets. 
At Bignicourt, one old man was left alone; 
his wife and two children having been suffo- 
cated in the cellar when the house was burned 
over their heads. Two women, a mother and 
her daughter, drowned themselves on hearing 



158 Helping France 

that the Germans were about to take the vil- 
lage. The husband, asking permission to 
search for his wife's body, was put in prison. 
So run the tales in all the countryside. And, 
after the victory, only a few days after, the 
neighbors coming back to the ruins, took 
stock of their losses. 

Of property, horses, farm animals and fur- 
niture, practically nothing remained. Of the 
families themselves, here are typical records: 
A mother and five children, one son dead, two 
others at the front; a widow seventy-four 
years old, her husband killed by the Germans, 
one son at the front; a spinster, seventy-two 
years old, her sister dead of the hardships 
suffered in the course of her flight at the time 
of the battle; a young girl, her father and 
mother having died of heart failure at the 
time of the bombardment; a mother, her two 
sons mobilized and one of them wounded; a 
retired teacher, aged seventy-two, and his 
aged wife, without resource. 

Yet in these villages, as elsewhere, the in- 



The Road to Verdun 159 

habitants shared the feeling of the old woman 
of whom Rene* Benjamin writes in " Un Pauvre 
Village," * — any village, anywhere in devas- 
tated France, as he explains. She is returning 
with her little granddaughter. " The little girl 
asked : 

"'Is it much further, grandmother?' 
"And she, she knew that it was there, and 
she recognized nothing. 

"The church, the road, the gardens, the 
houses, the trembling poplars, the pond which 
mark a bright spot in the valley — all dead, 
vanished, all fallen, overturned, destroyed. — 
Is it far? Alas, we are here! . . . This is her 
country, her life. It is here that she passed 
long days, this old woman, here where lie 
all the thoughts of her poor head, all visions, 
desires, her past, her memory. And all is 
sacked, pillaged, torn to pieces! Massacre 
and death; she, herself, dying, it seems; but 
her first word does not portray her own suf- 
fering; she thinks still of her old and wretched 

* G. Weil, Publisher, Paris. 



160 Helping France 

friend, this village which is no more than a 
shapeless, miserable heap, and in a voice 
heavy with the grief of the aged who 
realize all the sufferings of life, she groans 
only: 

'Oh! . . . Mon Dieu! . . . The poor thing!'" 
It was the privilege of the English Friends 
to come into the Marne only two months after 
the battle of the Marne had been won. From 
the Marne, they extended their work into the 
Meuse. Both are agricultural departments, 
of rolling hills and valleys, vines and grassy 
meadows, watered by the two historic rivers 
which have given them their respective names. 
In both, the wounds of the invasion were still 
fresh. If one recalls reading, in far-away 
America, the course of the battles so recently 
fought here; the headlines of Armageddon, 
the horror that seemed to envelop even our 
peaceful lives, he has some faint conception 
of the emotional as well as the physical over- 
whelming of the first days of the war. The 
Friends shared this emotion. 



The Road to Verdun 161 

From the moment when they threw open 
their meeting house at Folkestone to the first 
Belgian refugees, their consuming desire has 
been to help; and their plan is to help not 
masses, but individuals. Out of this fact 
comes one of the strange contrasts of the war. 
They, living with the peasants, becoming 
"Villagers of the Villages," could doubtless 
recount more German atrocities than any 
other group of soc al workers in France. They, 
pacifists, conscientious objectors, haters of 
all war, could equally gather the proofs for 
the statement that home service, next to 
fighting itself, is the service of greatest value 
in winning the war. They, who knew every 
family for a hundred and fifty miles in the 
territory from Esternay to Verdun, could tell 
you that there is practically not one but has 
husband, sons, or brothers at the front. Yet 
they have performed their service from an 
ideal and spiritual motive. They have .seen 
only the misfortunes; they have pitied, but 
they have not judged. 



162 Helping France 

At the time of the arrival of the American 
Red Cross in France, there were already work- 
ing in the Marne and the Meuse about a 
hundred and fifty of these English Friends. 
On the same ship with the Red Cross Com- 
missioner, there sailed from America two rep- 
resentatives of the American Friends desirous 
of effecting a working agreement whereby 
they too might work in France. This plan 
was welcomed not only by the English 
Friends, but by the American Red Cross, and 
large funds were placed at its disposal. Up to 
November 11, 1918, this arrangement had 
resulted in an increase of the Friends* per- 
sonnel from 150 to between 500 and 600, half 
of whom are Americans. The direct appro- 
priations of the American Red Cross, keeping 
pace with this increase in numbers, have sup- 
plied during this period half of the entire 
money expended. 

The American Friends, on the other hand, 
have held themselves in readiness to do any 
work that the Red Cross required of them. 



The Road to Verdun 163 

They have put up barracks for hospitals, 
erected shelters for workers, done expert ser- 
vice such as running the saw mill at Noyon, 
and gathering in the harvests last summer on 
the second battlefield of the Marne. But 
the prime end for which the Red Cross de- 
signed the Friends' Units — agricultural re- 
construction — was hopelessly deferred by the 
sinister spring of 1917. They were there- 
fore free to collaborate entirely with their 
predecessors, the English group. The activ- 
ities in which these latter engage are divided, 
like those of the Red Cross itself, into service 
for refugees from the devastated area, and 
those remaining in it or returning to it. Be- 
sides, they have a very important branch 
unlike anything undertaken by any other relief 
agency, the manufacture of demountable 
houses, already mentioned. 

In the Meuse, and in the Marne, the activ- 
ties of the Friends are five in number: Re- 
construction, agriculture, medical aid, trans- 
port, economic relief. Of these, reconstruc- 



164 Helping France 

tion and agriculture have been the big pro- 
gramme. By the end of 1916, 500 houses had 
already been put up or repaired. This prac- 
tically finished the building undertaken for 
small holders in these two departments, until 
the lines should move again. But there re- 
mained a very interesting experiment which 
was carried out. Not all the farmers, nat- 
urally, owned their land. There were shep- 
herds, farriers, and small dependents of larger 
holdings. Failing to own land, no one was 
entitled to a house. Yet his services, or those 
of his wife, were he absent, were most valu- 
able at a time when farm labor was almost 
impossible to obtain. The Friends therefore 
secured two grants of waste land, and upon 
them erected two model villages of perhaps 
thirty houses each for landless refugees. The 
houses themselves are two-room, three-room, 
or four-room dwellings of red brick with red 
tile roofs. Each has its door-yard of flowers, 
its neat gate and wicket fence. The sidewalk 
is bordered by newly set trees; the drainage 



The Road to Verdun 165 

system is complete, and the life of the 
pigmy village centers around a steeple-roofed 
well. 

Unlike building, agriculture is perennial. 
The Friends had five establishments in the 
Marne and Meuse, with a permanent force of 
twenty-one men. In the sector about Sermaize, 
which was the largest center for all kinds of 
relief, two hundred and thirty acres were 
plowed last year, half of which were also har- 
rowed and sown. One hundred machines, 
mostly mowers and binders, were loaned out 
to the farmers and kept track of; five hundred 
machines in all had been repaired. Hay was 
mowed, grain was cut, and nine hundred and 
three tons of it were threshed. Besides, the 
farms were stocked for breeding rabbits, 
chickens, sheep and goats. 

Next to agriculture, in the line of economic 
relief, are the industries for women in which 
the Friends excel. At Bar-le-Duc, they have 
availed themselves of an industry long estab- 
lished in the region; white embroidery of 



166 Helping France 

linen and underwear. But this requires skilled 
workers. There was imperative need at Ser- 
maize of a simpler craft, which should occupy 
the time and the thought of the homeless 
refugees crowded into the once fashionable 
bathing casino there. Before shelters could 
be built for them, these unfortunates in- 
habited a human bee-hive, a village of three 
hundred souls, where each family possessed 
only a cubicle, often without light, and prac- 
tically without air. As rapidly as possible, 
the worst features of this overcrowding were 
remedied and eventually the families were 
reinstated in homes of their own. But they 
comprised a population of field workers or 
factory hands, unaccustomed to the use of 
the needle. For them, a special form of em- 
broidery in colored wools on linen — old linen 
such as many of them still possessed — was 
designed. To these industries has been added 
straw plaiting. All are flourishing, the prod- 
ucts being sold in the fashionable Parisian 
stores. 



The Road to Verdun 167 

Transport, indispensable as it is, resolves 
itself always into terms of machines, chauf- 
feurs, and gasoline. The American Red Cross 
augmented this service, doubtless. But its 
chief contribution to the Friends has been that 
of medical relief. The English Friends had 
already established one maternity hospital, 
one children's hospital, three convalescent 
homes, and district nursing. In conjunction 
with the Children's Bureau and later with the 
Medical Department, the American Red Cross 
has strengthened all this work by the loan of 
doctors, and by the increased funds available. 
Two of the most important additions were 
dental clinics and a surgical hospital. 

The latter, beginning with a semi-disman- 
tled country house at Sermaize, grew into a 
plant accommodating sixty patients, with its 
own electric lighting, its baths, its white oper- 
ating room, and its clean wards. Thirty 
nurses and nurses' aids cared for the patients, 
who came from a radius of thirty miles around. 
They were not charity patients, by any 



i68 Helping France 

(; 

means; one might be the wife of a French 
colonel, another the daughter of a sous-prefet, 
and others the wives and the children of the 
soldiers or the aged parents they had left. 
There was absolutely no other surgeon in the 
district, no other civilian hospital. All were 
treated free of charge. 

Except for the warehouse of the Red Cross 
established at Chalons in April, 1918, and for 
the regular relief work of the department, 
there were, up to the time of the armistice, no 
other considerable agencies working on the 
spot in the Marne. There was, however, one 
that is interesting because it represents the 
Protestants of France, under the name of the 
Comite Protestant d'Entr'Aide. In the ham- 
let of Heiltz-le-Maurupt, on the Marne battle 
line, was a Protestant church and in the vil- 
lage were thirty families of that faith, descend- 
ants of the Huguenots, who lost all they pos- 
sessed. The Friends put up in this village the 
shelters for which the Entr'Aide supplied the 
furnishings. In like manner, the Friends 



The Road to Verdun 169 

have used the supplies of the Bon Gite and 
the Renaissance du Foyer. 

It would be extremely interesting to take up 
in detail the cooperation of our warehouse at 
Chalons with the prefecture of the Marne. 
Like Amiens, Chalons is a gateway for refu- 
gees, and, as at Amiens, a careful plan has 
been worked out for their relief. In so far 
as this plan supplements the relief work of the 
Friends and of the Red Cross, it has a place 
here. The plan is that of M. Nicaud, depart- 
mental inspector of public assistance, and 
embraces both transient refugees and the in- 
habitants of the Marne who are in straits 
owing to the war. M. Nicaud acts for the 
Departmental Commission called into being 
by the Ministry of the Interior in August, 
1917. He is responsible to the preset of the 
Marne. Like so many of the departmental 
officials of France he is not a native of the 
department himself, but was appointed only 
a year before the outbreak of the war. In the 
room adjoining his office, the walls are lined 



170 Helping France 

with open files. Here are the records of the 
eprouves (sufferers), it may be from Belgium, 
from the Nord, or from the Marne itself. 
They represent requests for aid, investigations 
by the mayor of the commune in which the 
applicant resides, and the amount of aid given. 
Up to the 20th of November, 1918, 28,922 
families or 83,000 persons had been given 
assistance. But this assistance is not given, 
except in the case of non-residents, in cash. 
M. Nicaud — like most of the French offi- 
cials — is a firm believer in preserving the inde- 
pendence of the recipient. The latter is pre- 
sented with an order for the amount covering 
his immediate needs, redeemable at his own 
local merchant's, or at a depot established by 
the State. Into this scheme of relief, both 
the American Red Cross and the Friends have 
come tentatively, the Red Cross having 
donated a monthly stipend and large supplies, 
and the Friends, under the prefecture, having 
established a distributing depot of these sup- 
plies at Chalons against the orders of M. Ni- 



The Road to Verdun 171 

caud. Naturally, however, the subsidies for 
the prefectorial plan come largely from the 
government, and as yet private agencies in the 
Marne have not worked out the complete 
coordination with the prefecture which M. 
Nicaud hopes to effect. 

The Meuse adjoins the Marne without 
natural barriers. One of the English Friends 
describes it as "comparatively poor and 
almost entirely agricultural. The men having 
been drawn away by the war, there is no 
one left to think for them. The depres- 
sion in these villages is very pitiful." This 
was in 1915. In 1916, the Meuse, quiescent 
since the onslaught of 1914, sprang into ter- 
rible glory, in the defense of Verdun. While 
the cannon of Fort Vaux and Fort Douau- 
mont thundered, while overhead the German 
shells and bombs were being hurled, village 
women by the roadside broke stone to keep in 
repair the vital road that night and day fed 
the defense. On that road depended Verdun, 
cut off from all other means of communica- 



172 Helping France 

tion, and on Verdun, hung France. Fifteen 
miles, at one time, was the narrow space that 
separated the German armies on either side of 
the road. Thousands of lives were poured out 
to save it. 

There, among the heroic villages, another 
organization beside the Friends came in 
October, 1916, — the Villages Lib£r6s. It es- 
tablished an outpost in charge of a nurse, 
Mile. Sirodot, who was for many years inter- 
ested in an orphanage in Brittany. The little 
center grew; two other volunteers came to act 
as nurses, and by the autumn of 1918, there 
were sixty villages all up and down the road 
in their care. Not only nursing, but material 
aid was given, though here again the Vil- 
lages Liber6s put into practice their convic- 
tion that the recipients should pay something, 
be it ever so little, for the objects accorded 
them. The greatest need of the two ladies 
in charge of the district was transportation, 
and this, with a chauffeur, the Red Cross 
supplied. They also gave liberally of their 



The Road to Verdun 173 

stores and for some time had their civilian 
headquarters in the grounds of the chateau 
which served as headquarters for the Villages 
Liberes also at Rosnes. 

With the Villages Liberes, and later with the 
Children's Bureau of the Red Cross, worked 
also a group of the American Fund for French 
Wounded, establishing dispensaries for the 
civilians. But, like the Red Cross itself, it 
quickly turned to the care of our own wounded 
in the terrible fighting of the Argonne. 

The road to Verdun! There might honk 
the gray Ford of the Friend's Unit, unabashed; 
there through the mud walked the ladies of 
the Villages Liberes, in their blue uniforms and 
white banded, floating veils; there crashed 
and rumbled the French army camions, hun- 
dreds of them, driven by slant-eyed Anna- 
mites; there at a crossroad stood the Yankee 
M. P., holding up traffic at its peril; there the 
soldiers of the world, it seemed, marched by. 
Our ambulance boys, all during the siege of 
1916, flashed up and down it, our troops in 



174 Helping France 

khaki have traveled it; our dead are laid to 
rest on the hillsides that overlook it, winding 
up to Verdun. 

But that was before the armistice. On the 
night of November 11, 1918, the moon, no 
longer a Boehe moon, shone on the long white 
road and on the shattered villages. For the 
first time in four years they twinkled with 
lights. 




Market at Montrejeau (Comminges). 



Reflexions et Croquis sur V Architecture ou Pays de France: Georges Wybo. 
Hachette et Cie., Paris. 



CHAPTER XIV 



THE PREFECT OF THE FRONTIER 

BOUNDING the Meuse on the northeast, 
a buffer between the French fortress of 
Verdun and the German fortress of Metz, lies 
the Department of the Meurthe and Moselle, 
anciently known as Lorraine. From the time 
of the Romans, when these marches were 
peopled by tribes of the Belgae, this has been 
a turbulent frontier. Here in the ninth cen- 
tury, as in the nineteenth, were fought the 
battle against German aggression which de- 

175 



176 Helping France 

termined the existence of France as a nation, 
cemented by the treaty of Verdun. So ancient 
has been the formal feud between the two 
races. Civil wars have engaged the province, 
in which figure the Bishops of Toul, the Dukes 
of Lorraine and of Bar, and that arch-enemy 
of all feudal princes, the King — whoever he 
might be — of France. Margaret of Anjou, 
Queen of England in the wars of the Roses, 
was born at Pont-a-Mousson, the ruins of 
which were held at the time of the armistice 
by Southern colored troops. Nomeny, the 
proud seat of Lorraine, was the birthplace of 
another princess who became a queen of 
France. To-day Nomeny is one of the thou- 
sands of villages wantonly destroyed by Ger- 
many. But in spite of royal alliances, Lor^ 
raine itself never came under the crown of 
France until a few years before the French 
revolution. Nor had she been long a state of 
the Empire, when she was cut in two, and her 
northern half ceded, in 1872, to Germany. 
North of the Moselle, converted into an ever- 



The Prefect of the Frontier 177 

present menace at Strasbourg and Metz, lay 
the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. 

It is not strange that the Meurthe and 
Moselle can boast many an admiral and mar- 
shal of France. At Toul and at Nancy were 
situated those military schools which trained 
year after year the picked troops of the 
Division of Iron, the men who, relying on the 
inviolable neutrality of Belgium, thought to 
withstand between Verdun and Belfort the 
first assaults of their ancient enemy, Ger- 
many. As a matter of fact they did so with- 
stand them in the fall of 1914. But the glory 
of that victory was swallowed up in the greater 
glory of the Marne. 

As the German troops swept ever nearer 
through Nomeny to the west, and through 
LuneVille and Gerbevillers to the east, Nancy 
knew that her fate in the combined attack 
rested on the semicircle of wooded hills about 
her known as Le Grand Couronne* de Nancy 
(the Great Crown of Nancy) and held by her 
troops. It is told how the artillery on one of 



178 Helping France 

these heights fell short of ammunition. The 
guns fired their last shot; the Germans were 
advancing. Nothing remained but to destroy 
the guns and retreat. The order was given. 
The crew of one gun received it with tears in 
their eyes. "My captain," they said, "Our 
gun has been a good gun. Before we destroy 
it, may we not decorate it?" The captain 
assented. The soldiers gathered flowers from 
the fields and branches from the woods; they 
made a flowery chariot of their well-loved 
companion in arms, the gun. But the captain 
stood watching the enemy, field glass to eye. 
Suddenly he saw the advancing columns 
wheel, turn and file away. He waited, still 
watching. Then the truth dawned on him. 
"The Germans are falling back," he cried, 
"the battle is won." Such is the legend of the 
gun that saved Nancy, as beautiful a legend 
as those King Stanislas caused to be wrought 
in the city's golden gates. 

In the city itself, during these terrible days, 
there was a spirit as unconscious, as heroic, 




Church of Flirey, Meurthe-Moselle. 



The Prefect of the Frontier 179 

as that of its defenders. It was due in a 
great measure to the new prefet who had come 
to Nancy only a month before. M. Leon 
Mirman had been successively professor of 
mathematics at the Lyceum of Reims, deputy, 
and director of public aid in the Ministry of 
the Interior. At the outbreak of the war, he 
had asked to be sent to a point of danger. 
The department of the Meurthe and Moselle 
was given to him. He came to Nancy with 
his wife and his family, saying to his new 
neighbors in his first proclamation: "I bring 
you that which, next to my country, I cherish 
most, my wife and my six children who will 
be proud to share your trials, to toil with you 
in your labors, and to unite themselves to 
your hope." 

From the summer of 1914 to the summer of 
1918, Nancy suffered bombardment every 
month, sometimes every week, and during the 
full moons — for the felon aviators of Germany 
preferred its light — night after night. It 
shares with Dunkerque and Reims the dis- 



180 Helping France 

tinction of being the most bombed city of 
France. Not only was the city bombed, but 
the surrounding country, until Nancy was 
full of refugees. At the head of the committee 
to care for them was, of course, the Prefet, 
and on it served the Mayor and the Bishop of 
Nancy. An asylum for these unfortunates 
was fitted up, and divided into corridors, each 
bearing the name of the village of the refugees. 
Trade schools were opened for the children. 
Industries were fostered. Huge underground 
refuges were built. Mme. Mirman and her 
older daughters were no less keen to help 
than the Preset. In fact the trade school was 
Mme. Mirman's particular charge. 

When the English Friends, so near the 
scene of these continued disasters, inquired 
in 1915 what they could do to help, they were 
met by the courteous reply that Nancy, being 
a very wealthy city, was proud to take care of 
its own. Nevertheless, they had for a time a 
relief station there. In the summer of 1917, 
however, there came a plea in the form of a 



The Prefect of the Frontier 181 

telegram from M. Mirman himself to the 
American Fund for French Wounded, asking 
help for four hundred and fifty children, 
evacuated from neighboring villages on ac- 
count of the German gas attacks. These 
children, ranging from one year to nine, were 
too young to wear gas masks. They were 
without fathers, because the fathers had been 
mobilized. They were without mothers, be- 
cause the mothers must remain at their posts 
of danger to cultivate the fields. 

The American Red Cross, as Mrs. Lathrop 
of the American Fund for French Wounded 
knew, was looking for work. She herself 
could supply the nurses, the transportation, 
and the medical supplies, but not the doctor. 
She laid the case before the American Red 
Cross. As a result, the Children's Bureau of the 
latter started the next day the first Red Cross 
work for civilians in France. The asylum it- 
self was a former military barracks of ten build- 
ings capable of housing eight hundred patients, 
situated on a hill a mile from the old, walled 



182 Helping France 

city of Toul. The prefecture and the army, 
cooperating, gave the light, the coal, the water 
supply, food, domestic labor and a squad of 
soldiers, beds and bedding and transportation 
of supplies. The Red Cross supplemented 
this help with a unit of six American Friends 
to install sanitary equipment, with milk and 
delicacies for the children, games and, above 
all, a doctor, a dentist and a director of play. 
At Toul then began the active cooperation 
between the American Red Cross and the 
American Fund for French Wounded which 
continued until January, 1919. From Toul 
their work spread, until there were twenty-six 
dispensaries for children opened under the 
Red Cross director designated Directeur des 
Secours Civils aux Enfants for the department 
of the Meurthe and Moselle. 

But the story of the dispensaries in the 
Meurthe and Moselle as a whole belongs to 
the Children's Bureau, which, in the Zone 
reorganization of the Red Cross, passed from 
the Department of General Relief to the 



The Prefect of the Frontier 183 

Medical Department. It belongs not so much 
to an area of devastation as to one over- 
strained by the necessity of the war produc- 
tion, not only of food, but of ammunition. 
Gas attacks, bombs, the shortage of labor 
which caused women to take the places of men 
in industry, the overcrowding of refugees, 
these were the conditions alleviated by the 
Children's Bureau in its refuge at Toul, in its 
city dispensaries and its hospitals and creches 
established in connection with munition plants 
such as Foug. True, there was the ruined 
city of Luneville, there was Gerbevillers, which 
will ever be famous for Soeur Julie and her 
wounded, there was Pont-a-Mousson, where 
even last summer the nurses who served the 
dispensary ran across the bridge in single file 
so as not to be picked off by the German gun- 
ners, there was Pompey, with its wrecked and 
silent factories, and a dozen more that one 
might name. Nevertheless, the work of the 
American Red Cross was primarily one of 
public health, supplementing M. Mirman 



184 Helping France 

in his programme of economic administra- 
tion. 

In like manner, the American Red Cross 
warehouse and transportation service, opened 
in January, 1918, was designed to meet the 
emergent needs of the refugees flocking into 
Nancy, to stock the soup kitchens, to dis- 
burse supplies for war orphans or for poor 
relief, and to furnish men and transport for the 
all too-frequent emergencies of bombardment. 
Ambulance service, the evacuation of the 
maternity hospital of Nancy to Toul, and 
finally, their share in the wholesale evacuation 
of Nancy itself resulting from ever fiercer air 
raids in February and March, 1918, such were 
the emergent tasks which fell to the Red Cross 
personnel. 

Meantime at the Prefecture, three broad 
lines of service were perfected; (1) the care of 
refugees already noted, (2) the encourage- 
ment of agriculture, with attendant recon- 
struction, (3) and, above all, by all these 
means the encouragement of the people whom 



The Prefect of the Frontier 185 

M. Mirman had come to govern. In spite of 
the fact that the greater part of his depart- 
ment was uninvaded, it had lost to the Ger- 
mans the main source of its industry in losing 
the Basin of Briey. There were the iron 
mines which had supplied its foundries, the 
most considerable in France. In like manner 
it had lost its deposits of salt and of potash. 
Its industries were further dislocated by lack 
of coal usually imported through Germany. 
It was cut off from the west of France by the 
loop of German armies almost surrounding 
Verdun. The front, with all its horrors of 
wounded, its gas attacks, its constant anxie- 
ties, lay not fifteen miles from the capital, 
which was subjected to both bombardment 
and raids. And from the front, far into the 
interior, over peaceful fields and vineyards, 
over open cities, over munitions factories, or 
over rail heads as the case might be, the air 
squadrons of the Germans dropped impar- 
tially their bombs. 

Yet under these terrible conditions the 



186 Helping France 

munitions of war must be forged. That the 
women may till the fields, the children must 
be placed in safety. "The tiller of the soil, in 
laboring for the communes labors also for 
France." "The victory does not depend 
solely on military action; the civilians must 
strive on their part to guard against the 
economic disasters of which the war is the 
cause." "French valor should affirm itself 
in work, as it does in arms."* Such were the 
appeals which M. Mirman addressed to his 
fellow citizens. But he gave them more than 
words; he distributed seeds in the devastated 
communes, and built and repaired hundreds 
of houses in the one hundred and thirty-four 
communes retrieved from the Germans. He 
loved the refugees, particularly the children. 
These latter do not all belong by any means to 
his asylums, in Nancy or in Toul. At Pom- 
pey, in all the towns lying at the mouth of 
the mines, the foundries of peace times turned 
to the manufactures of war. Night and day 

* Felix Rocquain: Un Grand Preset. La Revue Hebdomadaire. 



The Prefect of the Frontier 187 

they ran, and the tall chimneys belching fire 
were a flaunting target for German bombs. 
So it came about that the poor houses left in 
these villages stood empty, and every night a 
sad procession moved down to some unworked 
shaft, to spend the night in its shelter. And 
this went on, not for a week, or a month, or a 
year, but in some cases for four years. Chil- 
dren were born and lived and died — for the 
mortality was high — without knowing any 
other home. 

Such children as these were reached by the 
American Red Cross and the American Fund 
for French Wounded dispensaries; bright chil- 
dren, pathetic children, oftentimes war-or- 
phaned children whom kind neighbors took in. 
And it was the care of the children that 
touched as nothing else could, M. Mirman's 
heart. Just as he had entrusted his own 
children to the protection of the French army, 
he entrusted these other children of his larger 
family to the American Red Cross. 

War is a wastrel. In the spring of 1918, the 



1 88 Helping France 

refugee work at Nancy was swept away. By 
order of the army, Nancy was evacuated of all 
her useless and alien population. The refu- 
gees had to leave the community center where 
they had experienced so much of kindness and 
of practical encouragement. Later, a second 
blow fell on M. Mirman in a second evacua- 
tion, that of the asylum at Toul. Not the 
enemy, but the latest of their Allies, caused 
this unexpected result. Our army, coming 
into the firing line in Lorraine, took the chil- 
dren's asylum as a hospital. The denouement 
was sudden and unexpected. M. Mirman, 
who had gone himself to the mothers of these 
children to assure them that he would be per- 
sonally responsible for them, had no time to 
gain their consent to a second removal. He 
assumed the responsibility, and sent them, 
as he had the first convoys, on a special train 
to a place of safety outside the fighting 
zone. 

But the dispensaries, the hospitals and the 
creches, attached to the factory centers, and 



The Prefect of the Frontier 189 

the Nancy warehouse continued to extend 
help to the civilians of the Meurthe and 
Moselle. The aerial bombardments, increas- 
ing up to the time of the armistice, made this 
service of exceptional value. The preparation 
for the great offensive against Metz, to have 
been launched by us and by the French, on 
November 11th, on the other hand, made it 
increasingly difficult. Wholesale evacuations 
from the zone of operation to the north of 
Nancy added to the stream of refugees de- 
parting from the city itself. It was the aim 
of the prefecture to outfit each of these refu- 
gees with clothing and with food for the jour- 
ney. The resources of the Nancy warehouse 
were placed at the disposal of Mme. Mirman 
and a committee of charitable ladies, for this 
end, as well as for all the wartime charities 
which they directed. Mme. Massiet, wife 
of General Massiet, writes of this: "the 
assistance in food and clothing in these days 
of restricted supplies and expensive living 
has rendered us a service the importance of 



190 Helping France 

which is above anything which we can 
express." 

On the heights of Chateau-Thierry, 
before the St. Mihiel salient, in the Argonne 
Forest, and on the front of Nancy, which com- 
manded Metz, the American Army was given 
by the French its posts of honor. In Lorraine 
fell the first of our army for France. The de- 
partment of the Meurthe and Moselle has 
commemorated their sacrifice by a monument 
emblazoned with the double cross of Lorraine. 
Our men of that advance division wear the 
emblem of Lorraine upon their shoulders. 
No less precious a symbol of the entente cor- 
diale, of appreciation of American effort, will 
rise in the Meurthe and Moselle, in commem- 
oration of the American Red Cross. It will 
be a living memorial, a trade school, founded 
by M. Mirman from money given him by the 
Red Cross to use in any way he saw fit, for 
the children of Lorraine. 




Saint Cyr (near Dourdan) . 

Reflexions et Croguis sur V Architecture au Pays de France: Georges Wybo. 
Hachelte et Cie., Paris. 



CHAPTER XV 



THE FLAGS OF VICTORY 



WITH the proclaiming of the armistice, on 
November 11, 1918, the second phase of 
the effort of the American Red Cross for civil- 
ians drew to an end. The merging of the 
military and civilian branches made necessary 
at the time of the retreat, and perfected in the 
system of Zone management during the stu- 
pendous Allied offensive of the early autumn, 



191 



192 Helping France 

suddenly lost its reason for being. The con- 
centration of supplies, of energy, of purpose 
in the soldier, and particularly in the Amer- 
ican soldier, relaxed. The husbanding of 
resources against a winter in the trenches, the 
restrictions placed upon civilian buying, the 
measuring of tonnage by the needs of the 
army, the impossibility of constructive plan- 
ning, all these uncertainties vanished over- 
night. 

In their place was presented a problem 
quite as stupendous : the devastation and the 
refugee. "In the steeples of the liberated 
villages," writes Eduard Helsey in Le Jour- 
nal, January 2, 1919, "the flags of victory are 
commencing to be displayed. To the first 
rejoicing has succeeded little by little a joy 
more thoughtful which forces consideration 
of the actual realities. It is not sufficient 
to be victorious, it is also necessary to live. 

"In the regions devastated by the enemy, 
there is for our unfortunate compatriots a 
problem so acute as to border on tragedy. 



The Flags of Victory 193 

"Before stating the results of my investi- 
gation as to the sufferings of those to whom 
our soldiers have given their freedom, I wish 
to touch upon what is being done for them. 

"We must state the simple truth. All of 
those upon whom falls the responsibility of 
dealing with this situation have a keen 
understanding of their duty, so clear and so 
imperative. The minister in charge, M. Le- 
brun, his assistants, the heads of departments, 
the prefets, the generous people organized 
into societies to render assistance — every one 
is working without sparing himself. Every 
one is putting his whole heart and soul into 
this effort. But the enormity of the task sur- 
passes the capacity of the best intentions; 
and those who are devoting themselves to this 
work of rehabilitation of the devastated 
regions, are the first to recognize and to pro- 
claim that the needs are out of all propor- 
tion to the results obtained. 

"Think that in the single department of the 
Nord, so completely 'sabotaged' by the war, 



194 Helping France 

it is necessary to provide the means of life for 
1,200,000 inhabitants! And this figure does 
not cease to mount. Every day from 3000 
to 5000 exiles are returning. A great num- 
ber are returning through Valenciennes, arriv- 
ing from Belgium or Germany, to which coun- 
tries they had been deported. In this single 
department of the Nord can be counted 
fifty-seven communes (among which are sev- 
eral large cities), and of these 40 per cent of 
all the real property has been destroyed. In 
thirty-two of these communes from 40 to 90 
per cent of the houses have been shattered by 
cannon, and in fifty-nine communes not one 
building in ten is standing. To sum up, half 
of the department is uninhabitable, and the 
rest has been totally laid bare. At Cambrai, 
Douai, and at Valenciennes, there was no 
longer when the Germans left, linen, bedding, 
cooking nor other utensils. There was noth- 
ing. 

"There is no one to blame for tne present 
situation but the Germans. Yes. But we 



L 


ife ,-' 


V, y "■;,>. "I 




iSP^ 


- : -4-| 


T 






M 


W 


ZXLf 


_- -~ "1 


«r 


gyp, 


i r _5]Sj 




Telegraph Corps Putting up Wires, Noyon. 

Apres le Recul Allemand, Mars 1917. Noyon, Guiscard, Ham: Armand 
Gueritte. Vernant & Dolle, Imprimeurs, Paris. 



The Flags of Victory 195 

are now in the winter season and during this 
temporary period from which there is no 
escape, hundreds of thousands of French, who 
have already suffered the anguish and torture 
of the Boche oppression, are still suffering 
cruelly. This is because it is much easier to 
destroy than to rebuild, and peace does not, 
any more than war, take place in a day. 

"Two or three million poor people are living 
in these liberated regions, either because they 
did not wish to flee before the invader or be- 
cause they have again returned to their homes 
at the earliest opportunity. There is actually 
nothing more urgent for France than to assure 
these people the means to live. 

"What are they doing? What are they 
eating? How are they dressed? Where are 
they sleeping? How are they spending their 
days and their nights? What do they need? 

"It was to investigate at first hand, to 
register the exact facts that I undertook a 
tour through the martyred towns, through 
the great cities so long shut out from French 



196 Helping France 

life, through the villages laid waste, where I 
have seen our soldiers fight. 

"Haubourdin, Halluin, Gondecourt, Creve- 
coeur, Courcelettes, Peronne, Bapaume, these 
are names of combats and of victories. It 
is necessary to-day to give new and peaceful 
battles against misery and hunger." 

There remained to be determined the rela- 
tion of the American Red Cross to this appall- 
ing situation. It called for emergency action 
quick and far reaching to be effective. But 
that very fact necessitated the closest cooper- 
ation of the American Red Cross with the 
Government on whom must fall not only the 
crushing need of the moment, but the plan 
for the economic reconstruction of the six 
thousand square miles of devastated France. 
Plans of reconstruction and of agriculture, 
worked out by the American Red Cross in 
the days when the German retreat was looked 
on as a gradual process, assumed insignificant 
proportions in the face of the sudden libera- 
tion of the entire occupied territory. Cities 



The Flags of Victory 197 

reduced to rubble, miles of soil empoisoned 
by gas, planted with shells and barbed wire, 
blasted as by a volcanic eruption, — this was 
the concern of governments. Above all, 
France felt, it was the concern of Germany. 
As a French soldier said on viewing the devas- 
tation reconquered, "After all, only the 
ruins are German, the soil is French!" The 
ruins are German, and she will pay. 

While these matters on which hang peace 
or war are being discussed by the envoys of all 
the world, the American Red Cross has set 
itself to carry out the duty, assigned it by the 
French government, of emergent relief. It is 
doing this, not in its own way, but in the way 
approved and determined by that govern- 
ment. This is, so far as the main plan is con- 
cerned, a return to the warehouse scheme of 
the Belgian Relief Commission. Six huge 
warehouses have been established in Northern 
France; one at Verdun, one at Chalons, one 
at Mezieres, one at Laon, one at Amiens, and 
one at Lille. Each serves a defined area; 



198 Helping France 

that of Verdun the Meuse, the Meurthe and 
Moselle, and the Vosges, that of Chalons the 
Marne, that of Mezieres the Ardennes, that of 
Laon the Aisne, that of Amiens the Somme and 
the Oise, 1iiat of Lille the Nord and the Pas- 
de-Calais. They have each a delegate, a 
staff, and above all, a strong transport ser- 
vice; for in the devastated area proper rail- 
roads no longer exist, nor tramways, nor 
busses, nor conveyances of any kind — it might 
almost be said, nor roads. The delegates of 
these warehouses are responsible to a Field 
Director, whose central office is in Paris, and 
he, in turn, is responsible to the Director of 
General Relief. The capacity of the ware- 
houses, and the volume of work contem- 
plated, may be judged by the fact that the 
first consignment shipped to Lille comprised 
one hundred carloads. Fortunately army sup- 
plies and refugee supplies stored in the interior 
could be systematically diverted to this use. 

There was already operating in Northern 
France another intensely American agency, 



The Flags of Victory 199 

the Hoover or Belgian Relief Commission, 
latterly called the Interallied Food Com- 
mission. From Belgium as far as the former 
German lines, they had their old territory 
divided into districts and committees, cen- 
tering about their warehouses. The Inter- 
allied Food Commission and the American 
Red Cross have, therefore, combined in a 
working agreement whereby the American 
Red Cross warehouses in France carry no 
stock of food, relying on the stocks of the 
Commission of Relief for Belgium, but on the 
other hand supplement the Food Commission 
in Belgium proper by Red Cross warehouses 
stored with other necessities. Three such 
warehouses have been established there. 

Meantime, another agency has been in- 
vited by the French authorities into the situa- 
tion; the Children's Bureau of the American 
Red Cross itself. Dr. A. Calmette, the med- 
ical inspector for the liberated regions of the 
Service de Sant6, sent in January the follow- 
ing appeal: 



200 Helping France 

"In the cities of Northern France that have 
been devastated by the German armies, the 
working population has suffered much more 
than the country people from insufficient food. 
As a result the children, especially from eight 
to sixteen years old, have been stunted in 
their growth. 

"Physicians are much preoccupied over this 
condition which puts the coming race in 

jeopardy. 

"The authorities concentrating all their 
powers on economic reconstruction are not 
now in a position to recognize all the im- 
portance of this question. 

"It is extremely to be wished that the 
American Red Cross, which has made such 
generous efforts on behalf of the refugees from 
the invaded districts, should see its way to 
organizing a work for the relief of the youth 
of the liberated cities. This could be done 
by establishing school canteens, where for an 
entire year each child could obtain a sub- 
stantial meal. 



The Flags of Victory 201 

"The cities of the north of France devas- 
tated or destroyed by the German army, call 
with all their heart on the American Red 
Cross for their assistance and beg them not to 
abandon them." 

In accordance with this all too evident need, 
the warehouse plan of the Red Cross was mod- 
ified to include stores of supplementary food 
for children, and canteen centers are in process 
of organization by the Children's Bureau in 
connection with both Red Cross and Allied 
Food Commission warehouses. Dispensaries 
are not deemed necessary on account of the 
return to their practices of mobilized physi- 
cians, and of the able direction of the Service 
de Sante\ In fact, nearly all the Children's 
Bureau dispensaries which have heretofore 
worked in the devastated area have been 
closed for these reasons. 

Besides the American Red Cross and the In- 
terallied Food Commission, there are hundreds 
of private agencies equipped for emergency 
relief and for reconstruction, which are already 



202 Helping France 

in the field. Of American organizations, for 
instance, all those who had posts in the north 
prior to the German drive have returned. In 
addition, college units such as the Barnard 
Unit and the Vassar Unit, are at work, one in 
the Nord, and the other at Verdun; and it is 
universally true that units which in war- 
time were hospital units, have taken up 
emergent relief. The organization carrying 
the largest programme is that of the Friends 
with a personnel of six hundred. The next 
in size is the American Committee for Devas- 
tated France in the Aisne. 

There are British organizations, notably the 
Comite* Brittanique of the French Red Cross. 
There are the host of French agencies, headed 
by the Comite du Secours National and the 
three branches of the French Red Cross. 
The former functions as usual, for the most 
part indirectly by subsidizing departmental 
and other agencies; the latter has an extensive 
field and a numerous personnel drawn from its 
nurses. There are the many smaller societies, 



The Flags of Victory 203 

who with the French Red Cross, have held in 
reserve their energy and their supplies for 
just this moment of greatest need. The 
clothing made for four years in the women's 
workrooms, the accumulated furniture, the 
kitchen utensils, — all are being distributed 
now. There are the owners of estates who 
return to encourage their villagers, their hands 
full of gifts. There are agricultural societies 
such as the Aide Immediate aux Agriculteurs, 
whose name explains its purpose, and village 
planning and reconstruction societies, such 
as the Village Reconstitue, and the Renais- 
sance des Cites. In the hands of the latter, 
the Red Cross has placed all the expert studies 
on the problem of reconstruction upon which 
it has been engaged for two years. 

This network of private effort, of whatever 
nationality, exists with the authorization and 
under the restriction of the French govern- 
ment. To this end a new ministry was cre- 
ated last autumn, styled the Ministere du 
Blocus et des Regions Liberees. As in war- 



204 Helping France 

time by the army, so now by the ministry the 
sectors of each of these societies are given out. 
Non-partisan departmental committees and 
the representative of the ministry in each 
department oversee and control to a certain 
extent the private activities and coordinate 
them with the colossal plans of the govern- 
ment.* 

It is witn special departmental committees 
that the American Red Cross delegates work. 
They themselves do no individual family 
relief work, but in each section distribute 
through an agency already established, and 
approved by the aforesaid committee, at 
whose head, ex officio, is the prefet him- 
self. 

The warehousing and disbursing plan thus 
adopted by the American Red Cross has cut 
off automatically not only its own direct relief 
work, but special services and subsidies for- 
merly granted by the Red Cross to cooper- 
ating agencies, such as the American Friends' 

* See Appendix. 



The Flags of Victory 205 

Unit, the American Fund for French Wounded, 
the American Committee for Devastated 
France, and the college units recruited under 
the Red Cross. The chief necessity and ad- 
vantage of such an arrangement no longer 
existed. With the signing of the armistice 
transportation had become unrestricted. With 
the practical end of the war, the wartime cen- 
tralization of American effort in the Red 
Cross became untenable. The purpose of 
the organization could no longer be said to be 
the winning of the war. Its civilian activities 
resumed their normal scope, that of an 
agency of emergent relief. On February 28, 
1919, the War Council of the American Red 
Cross was dissolved. 

It is too early to appraise the effort of the 
American Red Cross for the civilians of France. 
A hundred and fifty years after Lafayette, 
France has garnered the harvest of good- 
will, of deep obligation, which he sowed in 
the heart of America. In like manner, in the 
hearts of her people, and especially in the te- 



206 Helping France 

nacious memories of her peasant soldiers, the 
American Red Cross would most desire to be 
remembered, not for its accomplishments 
which, on any computation, are necessarily 
inadequate, but for its ideals. Alien like the 
American army to the old civilization of 
France, occupying a position of peculiar 
delicacy as a dispenser of gifts to a proud and 
war-glorified nation, it has doubtless failed in 
many points of etiquette, of tact, of under- 
standing. But the purpose of the American 
people to help, not as a charity but as an obli- 
gation, — that at least has been evident, and 
has called forth the generous applause of 
France. We Americans may be proud of 
this, as an expression of the temper of our 
people, and the nature of our government. 
It is not a new manifestation; this altruistic 
r61e of ours among the nations has the sanc- 
tion of precedents which prove it genuine. 
Our friendship with Japan, cemented by our 
remission of indemnity for damages inflicted 
upon us on the opening of that country, our 



The Flags of Victory 207 

disinterested protection of China, our giving 
of independence to Cuba, our tolerance of 
Mexico, our so-called Monroe doctrine, all 
attest that we hold to our constitution, and 
recognize in nations as in individuals the 
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness. 

Of one thing we may be sure, that no type 
of effort could have been more appreciated by 
France than that carried out by the American 
Red Cross in the devastated north. Against 
the material losses of the spring of 1918, place 
the words of General Petain: "The majority 
of the soldiers of France are farmers, and 
nothing could console them more than to see 
in their midst the soil cultivated, sown, and 
maintained in its fertility. . . . The societies 
assisting the civilians in the zone of the army 
contribute in large measure to maintain the 
morale of the troops." Similar testimony is 
that of Paul Bourget:* "The French people 
indeed, are essentially, and above all, a nation 

* L'Aide Immediate aux AgricuJteuis : For France. 



208 Helping France 

of agriculturists. The present army, issued 
from the nation, and representing it in its 
entirety, is thus recruited primarily among 
the peasants, and its qualities are those of 
the French farmer, of the rough and patient 
farm-laborer 'attached to the soil he has 
turned.' Look carefully. This war bears his 
imprint, for he has marked it with some of his 
most moving particularities, 
i "This war is long and slow, reflecting one 
of the most striking characteristics of our 
country-people's nature: Invincible patience, 
the faculty of waiting and recommencing. 
They possess to a singularly high degree the 
quality of adaptation, and that quality is 
being applied to-day in the fighting in the 
trenches, just as it has been applied in the 
past, and as it will be again in the future, to the 
sowing of the fields in the rain, and to the 
plowing of the soil. But this quality of adap- 
tation must not be mistaken for passiveness. 
The peasant, wearing a military mantle and 
helmet, and led to the assault of the German 



The Flags of Victory 209 

lines, does not follow his officers in the same 
way as his flocks followed him when he wore 
his shepherd's cloak. His obedience is intel- 
ligent; this intelligence is another of his char- 
acteristics. He seeks to understand. He 
knows why he is fighting and what he is de- 
fending. 

"The clear perception of the object for 
which France entered upon the grim struggle: 
to remain mistress of her own destinies, has 
sustained him from the very beginning. He 
is not fighting for the glory of one man. He 
is fighting for himself and his fellows, fight- 
ing for his own soil. Patria — terra patrum — 
what meaning there is in this etymology. It 
holds all that makes the substance of human 
life and its price: the dead and their local 
inheritance, the impressive recoil of the past, 
and the presence of the little corner of earth 
to be plowed, fertilized and defended." 

"It is this French peasant," to quote this 
time from Rene" Bazin, "so attached to his 
soil, so laborious, in all battles so silently 



210 Helping France 

brave, whom you have undertaken to 
assist."* 

Now that the battle is, we trust, over, this 
soldier, yes, the soldier of the devastated area, 
returns to his home. One hears of him thus 
returning from the four years of war, over- 
come and fainting at the sight of the heap of 
powdered stone that was his ancestral farm. 
One hears of an officer, coming a prisoner from 
Germany, unable to find any trace of wife or 
children or house. One hears of a senator of a 
devastated department, homeless in a terrible 
sense, whose daughters had been carried into 
the most abominable of slaveries in Germany. 
Up to the measure of its effectiveness, of its 
sympathy, will the American Red Cross be 
remembered for all time by such, both the 
heroes and victims of war. 

The French, intensely practical, as well as 
generous, have asked from time to time what 
monument the American Red Cross will leave 
in their midst. In commenting on this, a 

* L'Aide Immediate aux Agriculteurs: For France. 



The Flags of Victory 211 

director of Red Cross civilian effort has said: 
"We have not a single enduring piece of work 
in France to point to to call our own. Our 
aim has been to help the French in their own 
way. Our monument will be in their hearts." 




I 






APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 

AMERICAN RED CROSS 

RSsume of the Activities of the Bureau, ashed for by 

M. le President du Comite du Secours National, in 

his letter of 6 March 

Paris, 9 March, 1918. 

The aim of the Bureau of Reconstruction and Relief 
has been to work with the departmental committees 
wherever established, to supplement existing organi- 
zations, to encourage deserving ones, and to create 
new ones. The Red Cross is not an "oeuvre," but it 
seeks to help the "ceuvres," and occasionally has had 
to do the work of "oeuvres" in places where none 
exist. 

Beside distributing supplies, the Bureau is interested 
in fostering agriculture and the manufacture, so far as 
possible, of goods needed in relief work. For this 
purpose, as well as for discovering the needs of the 
population in the areas near the front, the field has 
been divided into six "provinces" — with delegates 
stationed at Arras, Ham, Noyon, Soissons, Chalons, 
and Nancy. An " ouvroir central " has been established 
at Amiens, whence garments are distributed; ware- 
houses at Ham, Nesle, Noyon, Soissons, and Nancy, 

215 



216 Appendix 

serve to store supplies imported to the devastated 
areas. The delegates work in connection with rep- 
resentatives of the Construction Department, and 
besides overseeing the distribution of relief, report on 
new needs, and cooperate in every possible way with 
the admirable relief work carried on by the French 
Government and scores of other devoted French or- 
ganizations. Not long since, the delegate at Nancy 
put what facilities he had at the disposal of the victims 
of a recent air-raid; the same delegate has been busy 
in helping the evacuated population reach the rear. 

Among the "ceuvres" helped by the Bureau are 
the following: The Smith College Relief Unit — now 
incorporated with the Red Cross; l'Union des Femmes 
de France; Secours d'Urgence; Village Reconstitu^; 
Societe" Francaise des Villages Liber6s; American 
Fund for French Wounded; Groupe Parliamentaire 
des Regions Envahies; Bureau de Bienfaisance de 
la Ville de Nancy; local committees at Babceuf, 
Compiegne, Ransart; and various individuals. 

It is a policy of the Bureau not to distribute secours 
"au hasard," and in the work of distribution it needs 
the help of disinterested local organizations. With 
the needs of the communes stated by local committees, 
the Bureau can assure a just division of supplies; 
it will give to those who cannot work, and to those 
who will work, but not to those who are unwilling 
to work. 

Among the things distributed, besides food and 
clothing, may be mentioned the following: seed, live 



Appendix 217 

stock, machinery for farmers, fertilizers, furnishings — 
such as beds, blankets, tables, stoves, kitchen uten- 
sils, etc. 

Reconstruction headquarters have been established 
at Croix Moligneaux, Matigny, Guizancourt and 
Quivieres, in the Somme. The Smith College Relief 
Unit is stationed at Grecourt. 

According to the last Bureau report, over 19,300 
persons were reached by the relief work in February. 

PLANS TO HELP PEOPLE OF DEVASTATED REGIONS * 

It is the desire of the American Red Cross to co- 
operate with the official French effort. We have had 
our relief experts visit the regions and have had a 
medical and public health survey made by one of 
the recognized experts on such matters. 

We understand it is the plan of the French Govern- 
ment to cover the evacuated region with various 
French Government committees. It has always been 
our desire to work conjointly with French societies 
and to aid them. We suggested to the French govern- 
ment through M. Tardieu therefore for their con- 
sideration, the following plan for American Red Cross 
effort which we believe would make our aid most 
effective: 

With the cessation of military endeavors, the Ameri- 
can Red Cross has a vast amount of material and sup- 
plies released in connection with our military operations, 

* Red Cross Bulletin, Paris, Dec. 28, 1918. 



218 Appendix 

motor vehicles, hospital supplies, etc., including a 
large quantity of hospital equipment, beds, bedding, 
hospital garments. We have American Red Gross 
committees all over the United States formed and 
producing various kinds of supplies constantly, and 
they will no doubt continue to for some time. Hun- 
dreds of carloads of supplies no longer necessary for 
military American Red Cross Work are even now 
being received at our concentration points. 

Large Base Warehouses 

We propose to divide the evacuated area into a 
number of divisions and establish a large base ware- 
house in each. At the head of each warehouse we 
will have one of our most competent General Relief 
executives. Attached to each will be necessary ware- 
house staff and a fleet of camions and some touring 
cars. In these warehouses we will concentrate such 
available supplies described above as we propose to 
assign for this work, and such total supplies will be 
subject to the requisition of and delivery by us to 
government committees working in the evacuated 
areas. 

In other words, instead of the American Red Cross 
taking any one section and confining our endeavors 
to that section, we will distribute the total that we 
can do primarily in the way of supplies among French 
Government committees, in that way supplementing 
their efforts wherever they may be operating. 



Appendix 219 

Tardieu Endorses Plan 

M. Tardieu, in accepting the plan, said in part: 

"Permit me to begin with, to express to you our 
gratitude for the generous assistance that you propose 
to give to the people who have suffered so much 
from the war. You will thus add to the great work 
of the American Red Cross a new page. No initiative 
will be more appreciated by our population, and I 
wish above all to express to you here my deep gratitude. 

"The program you mention is quite in accordance 
with the views of the French Government. The 
Minister of the Liberated Regions has organized in 
the whole of the territory previously invaded, a ser- 
vice for the coordination of relief, and the help that 
you may bring to them in the form you contemplate 
will be most precious. 

"In order to insure the contact between your dele- 
gate in each department and the French relief works 
accepted by the Government, my colleague, Mr. Le- 
brun, is quite willing to create special committees 
where your delegate would meet the authorized rep- 
resentatives of the administration of the National 
Relief, of the French Relief works exercising their ac- 
tivities in the Department, and of the groups of those 
requiring assistance. If the general lines of this pro- 
gram are acceptable to you, its performance will be 
placed under the control of the Ministry of the Liber- 
ated Regions, to which is attached the National Office 
for the coordination of relief in the liberated regions." 



220 Appendix 

MINISTRY OF BLOCUS AND OP THE LIBERATED 
REGIONS 

March 7, 1919. 

Note in Regard to the Organization of the Coordination 

of Relief in the Liberated Regions and in Regard to 

the Operation of Relief Societies 

The High Committee of Coordination of Relief 
in the liberated regions, which is, in a sense, the ad- 
ministrative council of the national office of coordination 
in the Ministry of the Liberated Regions, has put in 
the form of a Recommendation approved by the 
minister, the general principle of the organization of 
relief in the departments injured by acts of war. 

This organization, inspired by the experience gained 
in certain sectors, notably in the department of the 
Somme and that of the Oise at the time of the first 
period of the liberation of these departments in 1917, 
has as a working basis the creation of local relief 
stations serving geographic sectors in such a way as 
to place the agencies of relief in direct contact with 
the population. 

The conduct of these stations of relief is, as a rule, 
entrusted to private societies who appoint for the 
purpose one or several Delegates confirmed by the 
Administration. In default of this, the conduct could 
be assumed by some person designated by the Ad- 
ministration. 

In a sector of relief so assigned, the distribution of 
gifts of whatever description should whenever possible 



Appendix 221 

be effected by the delegates of the society to whom 
the local station belongs. Committees and charitable 
persons desirous of performing a particular action or of 
making a special gift in these sectors are always re- 
quested not to do so except through the intermediary 
of the local relief station, or in accord with it. 

The local bureaus of coordination of relief are so 
constituted as to be able to serve as intermediaries 
between the Administration, the local stations, and 
the relief societies. They pool information, offers and 
demands, and are the agents, through the intermediary 
of the Prefects, of the National Office of Coordination 
of Relief, for the purpose of avoiding, so far as pos- 
sible, omissions and duplications, and of taking charge 
so far as they can provide them, of needs which the 
local stations cannot satisfy, with the least possible 
delay. The local bureaus of coordination of relief 
are composed essentially of a Committee comprising 
representatives of the relief societies, of the populace, 
and of the Administration, and act, with their necessary 
personnel, under the direction of a representative of 
the Prefecture. 

In general, the limits of a relief station correspond 
somewhat to a canton, and the local bureau of coor- 
dination extends its sphere to the territorial equivalence 
of an arrondissement. 

Actually, the outlines of this organization having 
been so determined, the Administration endeavors to 
fill them out, and to see to it that there remains no 
blank on the map of the sectors of relief. 



222 Appendix 

For this purpose, the delegates of different recog- 
nized Committees, and the principle charitable indi- 
viduals were invited, in the course of working confer- 
ences held at the Ministry, to make known their 
intentions and their preferences. In this way, a 
general programme was established upon the agree- 
ments reached between the Administration and the 
different Committees and between the Societies among 
themselves, at these working conferences. 

Meetings have been held since at the Prefectures, 
in order to reach a definite agreement on these points 
in each department. 

The relief societies, after these conferences, have 
now been asked to make known their final decisions 
and their actual possibilities. In spite of the material 
difficulties of the hour, of which the gravest is the 
lack of transports, many have already responded and 
have even commenced to realize their beneficent 
campaign. Everywhere, meantime, Prefectures, Com- 
mittees, and individuals fully organized to assure the 
coordination of relief, are proceeding to the distribution 
of the gifts provided either by the Administration or 
by private sources. 

The charitable groups which propose to intervene 
in the devastated regions to care for the innumerable 
unfortunates of these unhappy localities, and to aid 
in rebuilding the ruins, become more and more nu- 
merous. No mention will be made in this note of 
proposals of adoption or of god-mothering which 



Appendix 223 

spring up on every hand, and which have for their 
object the helping of particular localities. 

The proper steps in order to effect these adoptions 
and god-motherings have been drawn up in an accom- 
panying recommendation of the High Committee of 
the Coordination of Relief. 

In order to make a list of the relief societies, French 
or foreign, which propose to assist the liberated regions, 
these societies can be divided into two categories: 
the societies of general scope which assist impartially 
all the devastated country and the societies of local 
scope which limit their intervention to a fixed area. 

These general and these local societies divide in 
turn into two sorts of intervention according as they 
furnish all kinds of assistance (distribution of linen, 
of clothing, of furniture, care of the populace, etc.), 
or confine themselves to a particular form of assist- 
ance (gifts of agricultural implements, of furniture, 
etc.). 

One must set apart the two great relief organizations 
which work in collaboration with the coordination of 
relief, but by special and direct means: The American 
Red Cross, and Le Secours National (National Relief). 

The American Red Cross which accomplished a 
considerable work during the period of liberation in 
1917-1918, is about to set up a new organization by 
creating great relief warehouses in the principal centres 
of the devastated regions (Lille, Amiens, Laon, Chalons- 
sur-Marne, Verdun, etc.). Its representatives will 
be in touch with a special Committee in each depart- 



224 Appendix 

ment, where they will be able to find all the information 
and all the collaboration suitable for seconding their 
efforts. The American Red Cross will make its 
distributions through the local relief stations. 

Le Secours National, presided over by M. Appel, 
and of which the Secretary-General is M. Guillet, 
has its agents in its departmental Committees in the 
liberated regions. It affects its distribution directly 
or with the cooperation of the prefectures in agree- 
ment with the National Office of Coordination of 
Relief. 

Le Secours National has appropriated important 
sums from its budget for contributions in kind and 
for various subventions since the liberation of 1917 
up to the time of the hostile advance of 1918, and 
it has resumed its subventions with a truly vast 
programme, and means of action which should be 
especially appreciated. 

Le Groupe Parliamentaire of the invaded depart- 
ments presided over by M. le Senateur Cuvinot sends 
regular subventions to the unfortunate departments. 
These sums are redivided or utilized through the 
care of a Committee which functions closely with the 
Prefect of each department. A certain number of 
relief societies, French and foreign, have grouped 
themselves in general associations under the name 
of Union des CEuvres de Secours aux Foyers Devastes 
par la Guerre (Union of Relief Societies for Homes 
Devastated by the War) of which the Secretary General 
is M. Silhol. 



Appendix £25 

Recommendations Issued by the High Committee of Coor- 
dination of Relief, in its Sitting of February 18, 1919, 
Concerning the Various Kinds of Relief Sus- 
ceptible of being Classified under the Head 
of Adoption or God-Mothering 
The High Committee of Coordination of Relief 
anticipating the organization of concerted offers for 
the reconstruction of the devastated regions, and 
especially of such as present themselves in the form 
of propositions of adoption or of god-mothering. 
In regard to the question itself: 
Issues the recommendation that the resources pro- 
ceeding from these forms of assistance must be applied 
to special and designated objects and not to recon- 
struction in general. 

In regard to the methods of applying these resources: 

Considering that the responsibility of the State 

of France such as she shall establish by the law actually 

under discussion before Parliament applies to all the 

damages suffered by individuals; 

Considering on the one hand the difficulty of di- 
viding among individuals the resources necessarily 
insufficient for the restoration of entire towns, and 
on the other the necessity of offering to donors, indi- 
vidual or collective, definite and limited objects cor- 
responding to their expressed wish to adopt such 
town or region;' 

Issues the recommendation that the charitable 
groups or persons who intend to intervene in the 
form aforesaid could fix their choice for the realiza- 



226 Appendix 

tion of the action which they propose to take upon 
one of the methods indicated hereafter: 

First. — Distribution of assistance to the inhabitants 
(beds, bedding, clothing, household articles, small 
tools for the house, for flower-culture, for gardening, 
small animals, etc.). 

Second. — Intervention for the purpose of bringing 
an improvement or an addition (as concerns what has 
been restored under the title of damages of war) in the 
establishment, real or personal, of reconstructed dwell- 
ings, notably taking charge of dispensing improvements 
affecting hygiene, and domestic or rural economy, etc. 

Third. — Taking charge of sums advanced under the 
term of loans to losers, to keep track of the difference 
between old and new (deterioration) in the reconstruc- 
tion of dwellings destroyed, sums previously consti- 
tuting by the terms of the law a debt of the war-loser 
reimbursable after a lapse of twenty-five years. 

Fourth. — Advancing costs of reconstruction against 
reimbursement of one part only of these costs by 
the loser from his indemnity for damages of war. 

Fifth. — Participation in the reconstruction of public 
monuments, civic or religious (town halls, churches, 
schools, hospitals) with a view of allowing to be 
brought to them desirable improvements, embellish- 
ments or enlargements. 

Sixth. — The effecting of any entirely new work in the 
common interest, water-supply, lighting, sanitation, 
cheap housing, erection of buildings of public interest. 

Seventh. — The creation of philanthropic works or 



Appendix 



227 



charitable foundations (hospitals, creches, dispensaries, 
sanitoria, children's colonies, etc.). 

Eighth. — The creation of centres of communal life 
(Maisons des tous, Foyers des campagnes) comprising 
hall of recreation and of fetes, educational library, 
post-graduate and professional, installation of games 
and sports for the young, shower-baths, consultations 
for nurslings, milk stations, etc., etc., and dedicated 
to the memory of the victims of the war. 

REPORT ON THE AGRICULTURAL CONDITION OF ONE 

COMMUNE IN 1914 AND IN 1919 

Commune of Babcetjf 

(Survey made by the Comite" de Baboeuf of the S. B. M.) 

Hectares. 

Roads 5 

Waterways 10 

Canal 15 

Wood and fallow land 60 

Railroad 5 

Meadows 95 

Cultivated land 500 

" Wheat 160 

Oats 90 

Rye 20 

v Barley 20 

Potatoes 15 

String beans 40 

Sugar beets 90 

Fodder beets 15 

Alfalfa and clover 35 

Gooseberries 3 

Orchards 6 

Gardens 6 

* A hectare is about two and one-half acres. 



690 hectares * 



500 hectares of cultivated ground . 



Grains 



£28 



Appendix 



Live 





Horses. 


Cows. 


Oxen. i 




"a 

03 

3 

a 


"oj 

> 


>, 

"■+3 

a 

OS 

n 

a 


> 


>> 

a 

OS 


6 

9 

"3 
> 


Before the war 

Taken by the Germans 
March, 1918, stock 


95 
90 

22 

17 


1300 
700 

2000 

3000 


150 

150 

35 
10 


500 

1000 
2000 


40 
40 


300 to 
700 




2000 



Appendix 



229 



Stock 



Bulls. 


Sheep.Goats. 


Fowls. 


Rabbits. 


Pigs. 


a 

•9 

a 


6 
P 

> 


a 

eg 

3 

a 


> 


a 

3 


> 


a 

CS 


> 


>> 

'43 

a 

03 

3 


6 

2 

"3 
> 












Turkeys 










8 


500 







1800 


12f 

Hens 

3i 


1000 


2.50f 


50 


30f 


8 









1800 




1000 




50 




1 


1000 







400 


8f 

Turkeys 


500 


8f 


10 






2000 







25 


60f 

Hens 

15f 


35 


12f 


1 


120f , 



230 



Appendix 



Classification of Agricultural Machinery, Wagons, Farm 

Implements 





1914 


1919 


Two- wheeled carts 


100 

40 

85 

60 

40 

300 

50 

150 

50 

15 

20 

35 

15 

2 

20 

8 

50 

20 

8 

4 

3 

4 

10 

3 

40 

5 


12 


Light spring wagons 


3 


Heavy draft harnesses 


16 


Light draft harnesses 


8 


Harnesses for shaft vehicles 


3 


Rotary plows 


50 
6 


Disc harrows 


30 


Rollers 


3 


Seeders 


5 




5 


Cultivators 


5 


Dividers 


4 


Harvesters 


1 




3 




2 








3 




3 








1 








3 




1 




10 


Beet washers 


2 







Note. — A part of the actual implements were rebought in 1917, 
but most of them have deteriorated. 



Appendix 



231 



Cider mills * 

Cider pressers 

Crushers, compressors, oil cake breakers. 

Cider casks 

Cider vats 

Scales 

Cesspools and pumps 

Miscellaneous 

Wheel barrows 

Ladders 

Scythes 

Pitchforks 

Dairy Equipments 

Cream-separators 

Butter workers 

Churns 

Accessories 

Cheese-making implements on two farms 
Forges — 3 stationary 

4 portable 

Carpenter shops 

Wheel- wright shop with motor saw 

Motors, 2 to 10 H.P., electric motor force 
Gasolene motors, 2 to 7 H. P 



1914 



80 


5 


80 


5 


28 


, . 


2000 


50 


300 


2 


50 


5 


12 


1 



2000 



10 

1 

130 

30 



1919 



50 



£32 



Appendix 



Twenty-eight Farms in the Commtjne in 1914. 



Mr. 

Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 
Mr. 



Hactares. 



lof 
/of 


80 


50 


lof 


40 


lof 


85 


lof 


80 


lof 


25 


lof 


15 




f 10 




10 


6 of 


10 
10 




10 




. 10 


| 


>• 7 


3 of 


7 


1 


. 7 




r 5 




5 


* 5 of i 


5 




5 




5 




f 2 




2 




2 


. 7 of s 


2 




2 




2 




I 2 



Appendix 



233 



Yields 

Grains: 

Barley 

Oats 

Wheat 

Rye 

Potatoes 300 

String beans 20 

Sugar beets 400 

Fodder beets 600 

Hay 900 

Alfalfa and clover 1,000 

Cherries, entire crop.. . . 8,000 kilos f 

Gooseberries 8,000 

Apples (average).. 30,000 " 

* A quintal is 100 pounds, 
f A kilogramme is 2.2 pounds. 



25 quintaux * par hectare 

30 

25 

25 



234 



Appendix 



Price Before the 
War. 



Present Piice. 



Milk: 

Production 10 litres per day 
and per cow during 7 mos 

Total production : 800 litres 
per day for the commune 

before the war 

Grains : 

Wheat 

Oats 

Rye 

Barley 

Potatoes 

Sugar beets 

Fodder beets 

Cider apples 

Cherries 

Gooseberries 

String beans 

Hay 



le litre 20f 



le quintal 25f 

20f 

20f 

20f 

6-1 Of 

la tonne 30f 
20f 
80f 

le quintal 50f 
50f 
50f 

la tonne 80f 



le litre 60f 



le quintal 75f 
65f 
65f 
65f 
43f 

la tonne 

80f 



la tonne 332f 





Renting. 


Selling. 


Price of hectare 


120f 

50 to 
80f 


3000 to 


Net gains before the war, the 
family living on the farm, ap- 
proximately by the hectare . 


5000f 
200f 



Appendix 235 

Damages and Losses 

Two thousand francs per year, per hectare, for the whole of the 
exploitation. — Estimate of Lt. Fort, service agricole, 1917. 

1914 -I 

1915 J- Harvest seized by the Germans. ; 

1916 J 

1917 No cultivation. 

1918 Work of 80 hectares approximately, harvest lost in seed: 

hay, alfalfa, clover, lost. 

1919 January 15, 4 hectares sown; 496 fallow. 

It must take five years to put the land back into the condition 
of the report before the war. 

One must reckon 100 frs. per hectare for labor to put the land 
into cultivation because of trenches, fragments of shelta or unex- 
ploded projectiles. 

In the commune, 200 hectares in this condition. 

All the farm equipment was destroyed or carried off by the Ger- 
mans. 5000 frs. worth of implements of husbandry lost. 

All the live stock existing in 1914 and that produced during 
1915-1916, up to March 15, 1917, was taken by the Germans. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process! 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: jy^j £(KJfl 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 

(724) 779-2111 



JUL 31 I9ip 



